The Inglorious Wonder Woman
by bulelo
Summary: Sun used to idolize superheroes, until her wish to be special dropped her into the ocean and gave her a glaring disability. And if she'd known sooner that people would die for her—because of her—she wouldn't have been so eager to live again. [SI/OC]
1. Somewhere Beyond the Sea

**A/N:** Hello all! This story has gone through many revisions, but I think I'm finally on the right track. To older readers, I have made the minor correction from "Sunny" to "Sun", but you'll see the original name in later chapters again as a special nickname.

Some sensitive themes that will be explored in this story include disability and mental health. By the time the characters are in second year, I expect things to be very divergent from canon. This first chapter is backstory-heavy to get a feel for our protagonist. Let me know your thoughts; please be an active reader!

 **Disclaimer:** I own nothing but my OCs and plot ideas. Cover art is by bearbrickjia.

* * *

"You dance differently when you know you won't live forever."  
―Leigh Bardugo _, Wonder Woman: Warbringer_

I. Somewhere Beyond the Sea

 **Larkana, Pakistan. Present day.**

Overlooked in the Ursa Major constellation, the star Suha is said to shine at the tip of the bear's snout and guide the weary traveler home even in the darkest of nights. On Earth, the girl Suha can barely maintain her own light, much less bring peace of mind to other people.

In her big family, and every family around them, girls do not count. Suha learns this from a young age, the unspoken law etched into her skin like permanent mehndi. She is eight years old when she first tries to mimic her brothers and works at their uncle's tire shop. A week later, her youngest brother watches on in mild horror, mild humor as father beats her, the wood coming down with a hard _thwack_ _!_

This, she never forgets. This, she never forgives. The scars run down her back and dig into her spine like a strangler fig, swollen and vindictive. In the future, Suha learns to hide in the places the men never visit, like the bakery and old excavation site.

The one person who comes looking for her is Amir, the second oldest. She spots him from a mile away, all whiskey-colored skin and green eyes that light up when he sees her. Mother often gossips about his future, about how he'll become a "civil engineer" and rebuild their city, but Amir is not like the others. He has kind hands that wrap up her bruises and carry her home in a wool blanket; she likes the sound of his pulse in her ear, as she presses close to his neck.

Late in the night, when he tucks her in, he tells Suha about the rainbow lights in the north and about the angels that visit people as butterflies and doves. Things he has told no other soul.

"I want to leave. Leave and find out who I really am. Maybe in America, or Switzerland, even the Philippines. Anywhere but here."

Amir's real dream is sweet and simple; the road is not. They bring his body back in the same wool blanket, shot down before seventeen, and the corpses of her other brothers in pieces. Girl and casket. Casket and noise. Noise and girl. She is ten and throws a tantrum because Amir isn't waking up. Laid in a bed of lilies, he is buried by sunset in a place where grass refuses to grow. In the next few years, their father is killed and they lose the house.

It is in a dingy apartment with peeling walls and a single window overlooking a fumigation facility that the youngest and final daughter, Fatima, is born. In those glittering charcoal eyes, Suha finds her redemption and fills the hole in her heart. The moonless curtain of night revels in their harmony, as the pair play peek-a-boo in the darkness and memorize each other's movements.

"I will save you," Suha tells the baby, the bars of the crib shadowing her face. "I will save us all."

When a tiny fist reaches out between the spaces, the older girl has her answer. Thirteen and resolved, Suha trades in her hijab and skirt for a newsboy cap and chest-binder.

At first, she takes on odd jobs, but when her mother and older sisters are out of factory work, she finds her talent for gambling. With a body quilted by male clothes, she becomes her family's sole source of income and deals hands to drunk men more powerful than any slap to the face.

The coins at her hip are heavy as sin but sweet as virtue; the dreams she crushes into powder make the best baby formula. All legal transactions, so long as no one can identify her face and she comes down on them with an iron fist first. The gambling business requires this, and sometimes, her heart does too.

Most days, Suha no longer recognizes herself: lean, hard-faced, and powerful. A "boy" who can go anywhere, be anyone. Her _bacha posh_ metamorphosis is complete.

Her only return to girlhood is through her baby sister. With Fatima, the little things in life—often interrupted by blood and pain from a night at the pub—give another chance. Hours spent stealing their older sisters' make-up, sewing old hijabs into blankets, and playing house while sipping tea like the British women in the magazines, pinkies raised.

By far, their best activity is picking up an old, poorly translated comic book at the newspaper stand. They find a cool spot in the alleyways to flip through it, wide-eyed and appreciative of every kick and flip.

Their favorite superhero? The one and only Wonder Woman.

"I want to be her when I grow up." Fatima points to a panel of the goddess helping a civilian up from the rubble.

"Any reason?"

"She never gives up, even when people disappoint her."

They close up the book and fall into each other's sleepy embrace. Secretly, Suha wishes for a radioactive spider, a magical shield, or star-blessed might. Anything to be more than some poor girl playing make-believe in a city full of sand.

Anything to be a better person.

* * *

Nothing good lasts forever.

The last guy Suha conned was the lackey of a big crime lord, intent on coming for her and everything she holds dear. She makes sure the apartment is empty for the dangerous company that day, bribing a teacher to give Fatima an extra hour of lessons and urging her other sisters to visit the marketplace.

The men are quick with their business. They kick the door, hold her at gun point, and demand the one thing she can't—could _never_ —give up.

"You touch her, you die."

"You don't give her up, your whole _family_ dies, bacha posh." The one guy spits in her face. "Payment for disrespecting the boss's men."

After they set a deadline and leave, Suha contemplates her options. Maybe Allah think she deserves this, or maybe she's just tired of setting others on fire to keep herself warm. She can't pretend to be a man forever, not when she bleeds every month and feels her body spill out over the binder.

But she still makes sure that the next worthless girl will never have to experience famine or abandonment again, never have to trade in her identity for a few rupees. Because Suha the girl is also a star; stars don't burn out when travelers depend on them.

In the end, Suha pulls one last trick. After packing some bags and writing some letters, she sends her baby sister to the land of the free, to the land of their superheroes. Their final act of sisterhood, like the nerds they are, is pirating the new _Wonder Woman_ at a neighbor's house and sipping smuggled juice boxes. Fatima says nothing as her older sibling cries especially hard at the ending, squeezing her hand in comfort.

Fatima can be anyone she wants to be; she won't have to steal from others to live. She will stand tall, chin up like Diana Prince, as she parts with her criminal sister. Waving her sister down the Indus River, Suha hears before she feels the stab through her heart, but at least she shoots the scumbag and takes him with her.

* * *

She never expected the afterlife to be like this: a long poker table and two calm but vicious faces, illuminated by a single garish lightbulb. She blinks back the fog and scans the emptiness, looking for some way out. The twins deal her a crappy hand and she discards a four of hearts on instinct, unable to clearly see their expressions.

"Allah?" Suha asks.

"If it comforts you," Player One replies. It doesn't. He throws a flush down immediately, fanning himself with the rest of his cards.

"Am I dead?"

"Aren't we all?" Player Two giggles. "You're just lucky to know you are, is all."

She does not think herself lucky at all, but she plays their little game effortlessly. Three tens and a pair of fives rain upon the card pile.

"Let's have a looksie here." Player One throws down four mighty jacks and steals the round, starting it up again with a queen of spades, who is the spitting image of Suha: all cropped hair, bruises, and bitterness. She flushes at the invasion of privacy; they pry into her life like they own it.

"Cross-dresser."

"Bacha posh."

"Hero complex."

"Sister complex."

"Gambler."

"Thief."

" _Murderer._ "

One by one, they shuffle through her memories, laughter rising to a fever pitch as each image exposes a part of her meaningless life to the darkness. Suha feels more than hears their accusations, painful reminders of the humility she endured for all those years.

 _Fatima came out alive,_ she reassures herself. _That's all that matters._

"That, she did!" Player One reads her mind. "We love a dedicated sibling."

"So what now?" The girl demands, tears refusing to fall from her eyes. "You lock me up? Send me to Jahannam? Our family was already there."

"Well, you did have an entertaining run." The second twin remarks, shuffling the deck between sooty palms. "Bonus points for killing the unlucky bastard who came at you with a knife. Such a sore loser!"

"I didn't like him very much," the other brother comments. "Wanted for every count of kidnapping and assault in the book. High-crime, he was. You got him before his friends snagged your sister. Could've trafficked her."

"Since you did us a favor for bringing him with you, we'll let you pull the trigger."

"What?" Suha narrows her eyes.

"A good girl like you knows exactly what to do."

They stand up from the table and snap their fingers, procuring the criminal. He yells through a gag, arms bound to his burly sides with golden rope. Everything poker disappears, and suddenly, Suha finds a fully-loaded pistol in her left hand, aimed point-blank at her killer. She suddenly remembers the way he drove the steel into her chest and how she lodged a bullet into his neck in retaliation.

"Think of what he did to you! To your family!"

"Yes, all the pain and terror!"

"You would've left that city too!"

"You could've gone with your sister to America! Fulfilled Amir's dream!"

Judge and prisoner exchange eye contact with one another, and she can't seem to breathe through her nose and her throat itches and her mind is on fire and _she's really dead and she'll never see Fatima again_ —

Suha shoots Player One in the stomach and Player Two in the collarbone without blinking. The gun steams as the man, the face of evil who killed her, melts away to reveal a blinding smile.

"Judgment has been passed," the figure says, less like the compassionate god of scriptures and more of a menacing force. "Good girl."

"My sister is the good girl," Suha counters, dropping the gun and shutting her eyes. The nightmare closes in on itself. "I made sure to show her what a life without mercy will do to the soul."

"Then I will show you what a life _with_ mercy can do for you."

* * *

 **Somewhere in the Yellow Sea. December 13th, 1980.**

The next time Suha opens her eyes, a woman with hair the color of rich soil and a smile filled with loving wishes coos down at her. This person must be a mother; she knows this, even having only experienced an unsupportive, withdrawn one.

The world is blurry and dream-like, bedazzled in nothing but blues, greens, and pinks. Mobility is impossible when everything is submerged and slow, but that comes with being a baby too. Suha has no particular qualms with her lack of freedom, not when the angel of a woman, who holds her with such care, makes her feel like the most precious thing in the world.

 _I must really be in Jannah now._

Her fingers are small and webbed and useless, as if freshly molded from clay, but they still grasp at the warm figure for attention. When the mother reciprocates, Suha hears herself laugh with pure delight.

 _I haven't done that in a while,_ she thinks absentmindedly, lulled to sleep by an ocean lullaby. Soon, "mother" will be "Murong" and "Suha" will be "Sungjin", fondly shortened to "Sun." It's an ironic change, going from a star in a full constellation to the center of someone's universe.

* * *

It takes her about a year to register her death— _this isn't a dream_ —and another one to figure out that she is inhaling water without drowning and halfway to the earth's core— _I am not disappearing_. Under the sea, her senses are both amplified and dulled, a limbo that keeps her from making this place her new home.

To her ultimate surprise, Merpeople are really nothing like their fairy tale counterparts.

One: no one is even remotely like "Ariel" here.

They don't have talking guppies and crab servants or look for adventure in abandoned ships. The creatures of the deep have translucent complexions, shark teeth, long nails, and magnified pupils spanning across the whites of their eyes. Some are more refined than others; sirens are probably the most attractive of the lot and speak a sing-song form of Mermish, so different yet familiar to Urdu and English.

Sun hasn't gotten a hold of a mirror yet. Frankly, she's not sure she wants one anymore.

Two: merpeople are systematic and label their communities based on bones, mapping out the ocean like one great anatomical chart.

Skull, spine, rib—every group accounts for something or another, like how her home represents the Eastern tailbone. Their architecture consists of intricate salt formations cradled among the empty bellies of whales and barnacle husks, tall buildings bridged together and based in cross-like formation.

Sun has so far managed to play off her discomfort of dead animals as childhood shyness, but parenting works differently in this world. Merpeople would sooner throw their offspring into a volcano than let them get away with being soft-hearted. Her own mother, Murong, has thrown her over the coral bed for complaining of fatigue. She _had_ to adapt to the currents and swim upward through the algae bed, lest she die in the sharp reefs below.

When she finally returned home, Murong greeted her achievement with more advanced Mermish lessons, as if she didn't get enough of that every day.

Three: sirens have adapted East Asian practices (or did the Asians learn from them, hm).

This fascinated Sun the most, having lived in Pakistan for her entire life, with the occasional exposure to American media. They run on the Lunar Calendar, red lanterns made from bioluminescent-algae, squid ink wash paintings, the Analects of Confucius, a man whose beard ran longer than the sea.

Sun spends a great deal of time home-schooled on these ancient arts and texts, as there is no formal educational facility in their part of the world. Most merpeople are interested in military pursuits, not libraries. Both tridents and polearms are in use, sometimes chakrams and war scythes with handles plated with fish bone, and warrior training often involves servitude in temples like Buddhist monks.

To what god they pray to, the Pakistani does not know. Not that she believed in hers anymore, anyway.

The rest of their time is dedicated to the upkeep of appearance, an activity that has effectively rendered Sun spiteful.

Her past self had an identity crisis with clothing, having lived her childhood a girl and her adolescence like a man. It is no different for her current self, who decides against hair accessories or seashell clasps. They squeeze and scrape at her already small breasts the way the bras and binders did to her old body.

No matter the culture, breasts always had to follow some kind of rule. Murong, unlike mother #1, though, actually encourages rule-breaking. So Sun, unlike the other children of the sea, swims through these waters bare as the day she was reborn.

Four: sometimes, trinkets from the surface world wind up at the bottom of the sea.

Plastic containers, dolls, music boxes, coins, bits and pieces of ship. These were the few times Sun did feel like the little mermaid, running webbed fingers along things she once knew as a land-dweller. Murong neither approved nor disapproved of her collection, but once in a while, she threw in a warning.

"The more you touch things from the surface, the more you will be targeted. They reek of human."

Five: merpeople aren't fond of humans, particularly wizards―whatever they are. Long ago, there had been a pact between the two races before the magic-users disrespected their underwater partners, effectively erasing their history and causing the species to isolate themselves.

Naturally, they aren't too keen on Sun either. She neglects to mention often, as if blotting it from her mind, but her _lack_ of tail has proven to be the biggest phenomenon of them all.

There are gills, fins, and scales all across her body, but what distinguishes a mermaid from a human being is absent. She stares at the two scrawny, pale legs glaring up at her with a vengeance. She moves more sluggish than the rest, can rarely steady herself against updrifts, and feels many, _many_ eyes on her the moment she and Murong appear in town.

It doesn't take long for this new world to pick on her the way the last one did; it also doesn't take long for her to understand what happens to those who dream of the sun.

"P-please! I was only trying to help him! He was drowning!"

At the epicenter of the city, a public execution takes place: a faceless merman interacted with a fisherman near the coast. For once, Murong puts a hand over her daughter's face, shielding her from the carnage.

"Murong, why did they kill him?" Sun asks, long after the merpeople have left the square. They left his body there for the sharks to feast upon.

"Because the hatred still runs deep," Murong replies. The look on her face ends the conversation, even if Sun wants to know more. More about the differences between merpeople and humans, about their history, about herself.

A week later, the siren moves their two-people family away from civilization and closer to the riptides, where nothing and no one ventures close enough to bother them. If they do, Murong is two steps ahead and releases their flesh-eating seahorses.

The nasty gardener got what was coming to him, the twat. They celebrate that victory with a couple of abalone. It is over this meal that Sun acutely feels her mutation, her intrusion into this world. _For what_ had she been reborn, if only to be strange and displaced again?

"I am incomplete," she says, letting the shell slip to the ground. A few moments bubble by before Murong scoops it up and wraps the end of her tail around her daughter's calves. She gives the girl a moment to herself, before waving a hand over her own left cheek. In seconds, the skin begins to cave in, revealing an old burn carved all the way up to the cheekbone.

Lastly: mermaids can use magic. Not much, but enough.

They also cry pearls, ones of which floats in soft spirals down Sun's face as she stares, heartbroken, at her mother's dispelled glamour.

"We are all incomplete, Sungjin," Murong finally answers, using her full name. "Do not pity yourself. You just need to learn how to work around it. Even if the world does not accept your disability, _you_ must."

That only makes Sun cry harder, and for once, Murong lets her as she swims right into the arms of her newly-found unconditional love.

"I don't deserve you," the daughter sniffs.

"Wrong: you deserve the best," the mother replies, pressing a cheek to the top of a small head. "Therefore, it is my mission to be the best."

The next hour is spent bullying a stranded mola mola around town, enjoying each other's company. Momentarily, Sun forgets her flaw and fears no future.

* * *

 **July 31st, 1985.**

Under a staircase somewhere, a motherless green-eyed boy celebrates his sixth birthday alone.

Sun laments him, waking frightfully from the dream. It takes too long for her to stop trembling, legs subconsciously convulsing in terror.

Who is he? Why did she want to reach for him? It's almost like she knew him— _was_ him, living his nightmare, cradling a broken arm—and it confuses her. These thoughts are not hers, a mad voice. Madness festering from solitude. The darkness her old self had almost been engulfed in, had Fatima not been with her.

She unleashes a scream, feeling a phantom knife wound in her back.

There is no Fatima to heal this, but Murong now. The siren is right there by her daughter's side to talk in comforting circles and make the bad dreams go away. These days, she's been kinder—like a storm is fast approaching and they are each other's only anchors.

Sun welcomes a dreamless sleep, for both her and the lonely boy.

* * *

 **August 2nd, 1988.**

Her curiosity for the surface never does die, only amplified by the strange dreams she has about the boy with the green eyes. Sun wonders what year it is now, what people have accomplished, what her place without humanity is; how much has the human condition changed in her absence?

The brimming intrigue induces a melancholy in her chest that she fails to shake, even when she learns more and more about this blue world. In fact, when she learns about her origins, that heartache only gets worse.

Murong speaks little of her _human_ lover—and isn't that a wild thing to claim?—but when she does, Sun feels like she too lost a best friend. Having gills and scales never bothered Sun so much as knowing next to nothing about the other woman who might've participated in her rebirth.

It hurts all the more seeing the absence eat away at her mother's smiles as the years go on. Sometimes, Murong will swim about aimlessly at night, searching for a sign, as Sun watches sadly from around the corner. They need this family talk, whether Murong wants to avoid it for the rest of their lives or not.

"What is her name?" the girl asks one day, as she polishes Murong's daggers.

"Pandora," the siren automatically replies from the kitchen. She cringes afterwards at the ease with which she reveals the identity.

"She was a witch?"

"That's right."

"They can do magic like us?"

"Yes, but they have many different spells to make up for their lack of other weapons."

"If merpeople avoid humans," Sun begins, "why didn't you?"

"Foolish rule to begin with, we aren't at war anymore," Murong replies. "But… well, she fell out of her research boat, and I was young and never liked the rules—"

"So you save her and get unofficially married?" Sun interrupts, switching excitedly to English.

"What did I tell you about speaking _human_?" her mother hisses. The siren scoops up her little ray of sunshine and handles her with care; that is to say, puts her in an impressive headlock. Foiled again!

"N-no one ever visits them, and studies s-show that extensive use of M-Mermish leads to brain damage—"

"There goes that imagination of yours again, speaking between your fins!"

The little mermaid blows out bubbles from her nose. "Oh, I give! I give! I just wanted to talk about my other mother. I don't resemble anyone like I do her."

A silence descends upon the pair faster than the humans pillage the tuna. Murong looks thoughtfully at Sun, searching for a reason not to cave and confess.

"She animated me from mud, right? With magic?" Sun pokes at her skin, as if her arm will pop off at any moment and reveal the ugly truth; that she's nothing more than a figment of imagination. The youth, for all her bickering, wants to know things about her other mother, to make the witch more of a person in her mind than a fairy tale. She wants to know her favorite color. What she liked and didn't like to eat. Favorite animal, holiday. What made her cry.

Murong could see this longing as clear as day; no point avoiding it now. Finally, in the pink light of their jellyfish lamps, she holds her daughter at arms' length and sighs.

"Yes," Murong answers. "I was never very interested in the mermen, and out of nowhere, a human woman gave me a child for saving her life."

"So I was a gift?" Sun perks up.

"A gift with a rebel streak, just like her. Pandora could never go a day without cooking up some new idea about this or that."

"I like what I'm hearing. What did she do for a living?"

"She invented spells. I gave her my sheddings for a fireworks one; they burst into something called 'ladybugs' in the sky."

That has to be the coolest thing Sun has ever heard; mermaid scales could make fireworks? What else could they be used for?

"When she left me, she'd achieved her greatest feat yet: you."

"Will I ever meet her?" the child asks.

"Oh, Sun. Do not make me miss someone I cannot have." The words collapse in Sun's ears like fissures imploding on themselves, ready to erupt into a new day. "She chose her people and I chose ours. I chose _you_. I will not regret that."

"But you already do! I look like her, I talk like her. You even said I _think_ like her." Sun shakes her mother desperately, reverting back to the miserable human language with which she started this conversation. "You don't smile the way you used to. I will surely be your unhappiness."

"Sungjin," Murong murmurs, tucking a stray strand of hair behind a small ear. She never, ever uses the full name; it always means trouble. "We may have parted, but Pandora and I made you out of love. To this day, you remind me of what life must be lived for."

And like every dignified mother, heavy-hearted but light-tailed, she ends the conversation with a kiss, returning to her anemone wall arrangement.

In a fit, Sun does what she always has: escape. Without fully understanding the situation, she darts out on her mother, who calls to her over and over again to remedy the confusion.

Outside, on the edge of the purple reef, where the ocean beyond is nothing but ink and unknown, something sad and terrifying brews inside her mind. She watches as one by one, her tears become pearls that drop like pins into the abyss, and how from the darkness, an impulse is born.

* * *

 **August 24th, 1988.**

Finding a sea witch proves to be much easier than people let on. It has nothing to do with following two eels into the lair of a lipstick-wearing octopus, and everything to do with just looking for the outlier in a kingdom full of irreplaceable beauty: the moorish area behind the abandoned human pipes.

The sea witch is a slight mermaid, whittled to the color of sunken ships and decomposed whales, with deep-set eyes and weary swim. She peers forebodingly into her cauldron, never once looking up at her young visitor, who swims stiffly into her hollow home. Her collarbone is held so tightly in her pallid skin that it looks about ready to burst forth with a life of its own.

The most curious thing about her is the moving—truly, _moving_ —image hung upon her breast by a silver wire. A woman that highly resembles the witch is laughing uncontrollably into the shoulder of a well-groomed man, enchanted to repeat the movement over and over again.

For a moment, Sun wonders about her circumstances. Who was she before this? Who was that man with a loving smile?

The witch seems to sense these thoughts and disperses them immediately, as if psychic.

"Mirabella, I presume?"

"Hmph. I know what you want, kelpling," she rasps. Sun has never heard such a voice before. The Mermish grates on her ears, like the creature inhaled nails and was forced to breathe between the remaining spaces.

"How are you doing that?" the girl asks. "Knowing what I want to say before I say it."

"Legilimency. Not that you would know anything about wizard magic. Does your mother know you are here?"

"No," Sun says, never missing a beat. "I came alone, and I intend to fulfill this alone."

"So you think that suffering ennobles you?" laughs the witch. She circles Sun, wrinkled fingers sliding across the little mermaid's flesh and leaving rose-tinged marks in their wake. She shivers uncontrollably at the decaying smile. "Did that work for you last time?"

Sun narrows her eyes. "You looked into my memories?"

The cackle crackles like lightning. "I know everything about you, little star. You are far away from home."

"Murong _is_ my home. Not Pakistan."

"Bold, bold statement," the witch says. "Have you forgotten that baby sister of yours already?"

Sun ignores the question, her heart distantly aching at the thought; there is business to conduct.

"Why did you become... this?"

The sea witch falls silent, claws wrapped around the edges of her cauldron.

"I chose wrong, simple as that," Mirabella finally says. "To our kind, love is once, but for the humans, love is every empty bed that can be filled. You still wish to proceed, knowing that the human witch might have moved on?"

"She may have," Sun begins, "but my mother never will. Name your price."

"Well, I simply adore speechless sirens..."

* * *

" _Don't let her escape!_ "

The guards come to take her away at the drop of an urchin's pin. Someone must've seen her going to and from Mirabella's cavern and reported it.

But they're too late; Sun has already made her pact with the devil. That night, she and Murong were coming home from the autumn festival. While her mother animatedly chatted about the dancing, her daughter threw a drought of deepest sleep into her face and the magic word.

" _Verto_."

From there, the concoction grew the siren fine, supple legs that would carry her into a better life. Against the rippling shadows of night, her daughter stowed away with the sleeping Murong to the surface. The crisp air was foreign and alarming, but Sun was determined, pushing Murong onto the shoreline. Beside her, Sun set a bag of human clothes, gold trinkets, and pearls she had cried the day before for the idea of losing the best mother she'd ever had. Once the deed was done, the girl swam without looking back. No farewells, no regrets.

She hadn't accounted for the starfish that watched the beach closely. They alerted the merpeople of her absence, and now, Sun floats before the court, face bruised and burning. Under the dawn light, her trial becomes a rush of sounds and curses. She has never seen the royal family before, and she isn't sure she wants to, now that all angry eyes are on her.

"What have you done, turning to the sea witch?"

"Murong sacrificed everything for you!"

"Traitor!"

"You are only here by the good grace of your mother."

"Infidel!"

 _I saved her_ , Sun thinks to herself, as if in reply to the condescension. But her tongue is barely a tongue anymore, silenced once and for all as Mirabella's single condition. She faces straight ahead, locking with the King's cold eyes.

 _I saved the mother I always needed._

But what about the child left behind?

The King hits his trident against the ground, an awful ring across the marble floor. Exile, blood, a social death. The insolent human-esque mermaid has taken one of theirs; no one but the merpeople themselves are allowed to do so, especially not a half-breed creation.

"Goodbye, child of the sea."

* * *

 **Camber Sands, East Sussex. September 1st, 1988.**

September, much like the act of praying, begins with abandonment and discovery.

A low, ominous breathing escapes the notice of midnight beach-goers, drawing closer and closer to the distinct smell of an open wound. Dark wings flutter and press into equally black ribs. The shadow is misplaced, far from home and too massive to fit the landscape, like a manmade rift in the shore.

Except it really isn't much bigger than a chair, bumbling forward without animosity. The infant beast senses loss in the air and sinks across the sand one timid hoof at a time. It only ceases its course when its gray, opaque eyes find the source of unspoken pain.

In a bed of putrid kelp, a child lays on her side, hands gripped around a slowly but surely bleeding gut. She looks to be about seven or eight, all pale skin and sand. What appear to be gills line her neck but soon retract, the fin-like appendages across her limbs popping off like bubbles.

The breeze does her no favors, drying out an otherwise smooth complexion. She fades in and out of consciousness, only mildly aware that three people have walked past her without batting a lash. A dog stays a moment longer to lick her exposed neck.

The old owner throws a towel over her, like a good arm's-length samaritan. "You take care now," he nervously says. "Not v-very good with blood, I'm afraid. The police will be here shortly."

Bedazzled in sweat and cracked skin, the girl peers up slowly at her newest company, the awkward midnight creature. Oddly enough, they share the same eye color, so she shyly smiles at the angel of death.

The beast tilts its head, observing the strange child. "He" has never seen one before, and they watch each other quietly with equally fascination.

Finally, the "human" opens her mouth to speak but no words leave her tongue—or what's left of it. This draws sudden, scattered tears that pool into pearls. The creature needs nothing else to know what she has sacrificed.

Suddenly, the bat-horse hangs his head, knees tucked in to lie by her side. It rests its beak across her chest. The girl no longer feels the pain, only the vaguely warm ribs against her forearm. She reaches out and pats the animal in time to her own heartbeat.

In this moment, they want nothing but each other, not hearing the heavy footsteps or rustling of robes approaching them.

Kingsley Shacklebolt has seen a great many things, but this? They didn't tell him about _this._ His tawny owl companion, perched on his great right shoulder, makes an unhappy hoot.

"Bentley, you better get going," he announces. "We're going to need Newt Scamander at once."


	2. Another Chance

**A/N:** Thank you so much for any feedback and support! I really enjoyed writing this chapter and took the liberty of giving the Chang family more background.

 **Key:** 'written speech'

* * *

"There isn't much justice in this world. Perhaps that's why it is so satisfying to occasionally make some."

—J'onn J'onzz (Martian Manhunter), _Justice League Task Force_

II. Another Chance

 **St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries, London. 1989.**

Newton Scamander has a remarkable affinity with all living things, those of whom include the healers, initially reluctant to engage with a magical creature classified as XXXX; and the so-called "dangerous" patient herself, who has been fairly calm given the circumstances, like washing up oceans away from home is a common trifle.

Abdominal trident stabs, massive temperature drop, a shark tooth lodged in the left breast. The "little mermaid" arrived to St. Mungo's Hospital in critical condition, with an orphan Thestral at her heels. He proved an irritation when the surgery began; the medi-witches were at a loss in navigating around the bed without an invisible roadblock nipping at any sudden movement. Only three of the healers, having witnessed death before, efficiently dodged the splinter-like bites.

Post-surgery, and the dark foal still hasn't budged, nearly breaking Kingsley's wand when he tries to separate the pair. Had the old Scamander not dealt with the creatures for years and intervened, the black wizard would've surely lost his good hand.

Once awake, the girl is greeted by her new friend and the Magizoologist, whose silly, dimpled smile is so contagious, she can't help but reciprocate.

There is a great deal of confusion riddled across her brow, but the man takes the overall reaction as a good sign. He proceeds to introduce himself and her Auror savior. The siren seems to understand English well enough, saving him the trouble of dunking his head in a tank and using rusty Mermish. Secretly, he wonders how much she knows of the human world and from whom her education originates.

"What is your name, little mermaid?" Newt asks.

She opens and closes her mouth soundlessly, face alight with some unspeakable sorrow. She can't bridge the space between her pain and his understanding of it, even when she is given pen and paper. The writing is so illegible that tears spring from her eyes and clatter to the ground in a rain of pearls, startling even the Iron Kingsley.

But when she foregoes penmanship and instead doodles a simple sun, in all its circular glory like a child's first art project, they finally break some ground.

"Soleil?" Newt chuckles at the furious head-shaking. "Ah, perhaps just Sun? How fitting."

The next few months are spent learning how to read and write and walk on land. The moment the girl has the hang of her feet is the day all medical professionals rue, for there is nothing stopping her from escaping her daily examinations like a whirlwind. It is almost as if she prefers the feel of the breeze in her hair to underwater activity; but clearly, when she refuses to leave the bathtub so often, that possibility seems unlikely and merely a side effect of freedom.

The final piece of her healing process is adjusting to air.

On occasion, during a series of rather sudden spurts of magic—the accidental type no one can explain her procuring as a "creature", not a witch—Sun chokes, her gills and fins breaking out of her skin unprompted. When this happens, methods from injections to bed-confinement fail to put a dent in the situation. Each time, the mermaid flees the scene as fast as a spooked Pixie and hides in the courtyard fountain. She trembles violently from the pain and leaves a trail of broken pottery in her wake.

That is, until Newt finds her and simply holds her hand, waiting out the panic attacks with words of encouragement.

"Shh, you are safe," he coos. "This will pass. Good girl, breathe like that. Yes, that's right, you're doing so well."

Thus conditioned, Sun comes into the habit of seeking out human touch, whether Newt's or a passing healer's or even that of Kingsley. Oddly enough, the black Auror sometimes takes the small hand without any goading, amused by her following him around the complex.

Soon, by the beginning of February, Sun is a regular sight for sore eyes in St. Mungo's, particularly to one demented patient. Sporting a withering face and short gray hair, Alice Longbottom contributes to many secret smiles and hand-holding moments.

Their accidental meeting occurred during hide-and-seek with the resident Thestral, one fine December morning. Sun could not, for the life of her, find Nebula, who was dark enough to blend into shadows. When the girl took a step in the wrong direction and nearly collided with a brick wall, the passing Alice stopped the accident just in time.

Something about the way they looked at each other, as if seeing themselves for the first time, inspired an attachment; a mother remembering a child, a child remembering a mother. So they hold hands every chance they get, temporarily filling in the spaces between their hearts. It becomes a point of empathy for Newt.

"I think it's time we find her a family," he observes over his cup of earl gray. "She is still young and impressionable, and these walls do none of us favors."

"I have been working around the adoption laws," Kingsley begins, "but they are quite vague and difficult. I can think of few reasons other than old pureblood opposition."

"Isn't it always them?" Newt raises a fine white brow. "Have you found anyone _normal_ who has shown interest in meeting our siren?"

"She's not exactly that, but my colleague requested a visit for tomorrow," Kingsley says. "Fate dealt her a divorce in the past two years, but she is ready to allocate that grief elsewhere. She has a daughter around the same age as Sun."

"Excellent. I see you're finally making yourself useful."

"And you should've never come out of retirement," is the comeback, before a book on aquatic life comes into contact with Kingsley's face.

Now, how to break adoption to their little mermaid...

* * *

Madam Guo Hua Zhāng, better known as "Lisa Chang", is a woman well into her thirties. After educations from both Mahoutokoro and Beauxbatons, the witch climbed up the socioeconomic ladder and landed a well-paid job as a secretary and then chief-of-staff in the Ministry's International Magical Trading Standards Body.

As a part of her life policy, she promises to "look good, do good" in whatever she does, which explains the supermodel impression most people got from her. That, and how like a vampire, she never seems to age. Asian don't raisin, after all.

Lisa met her husband of a decade, Wesley Lin, when he came to appeal for pill-packaging in his Diagon Alley Apothecary. The shorter man brought in a briefcase brimming with files and arguments; she'd never laughed so hard at someone before. Instead of being offended, he joined in and asked her out to tea.

They started a family together after a shotgun marriage and moved to Motherwell, Scotland. However, when her husband's company eventually filed for bankruptcy, due to sanitation inquiries, the relationship soon fell apart and left her a single mother.

At present, she passes through the entrance of St. Mungo's with her nine year-old daughter trailing behind, absolutely mystified by how an abandoned department store can turn into a spick-and-span hospital.

Little Qiū Zhāng—affectionally called Cho-Cho—looks every bit like her mother, all dark hair and large, creased brown eyes full of excitement for the day to come. She carries the latest Quidditch paper and a pack of Fudge Flies under her arm.

Upon their arrival, Kingsley reigns in the introductions.

"I take it the trip wasn't too long?" He asks, motioning to the lounge seats and biscuits. "It's been forever since I last saw you out in the world."

"That wouldn't be the case," Lisa begins, "if someone hadn't become an Auror and left us office people to become a hero." She pulls her sunglasses back with her hair to reveal smoky eyes. They glitter in the natural lighting and crinkle at the corners. "I kid you, King. You're doing the good work."

"Thank you, Chang. And this must be Cho-Cho!" The man leans down to ruffle her hair. "You are all your mother ever talks about."

"She never mentioned you," Cho replies innocently. She earns herself a pinch and Kingsley's good-natured laugh.

The trio gathers in a waiting room just before the dormitories, and soon enough, Newt joins the pair with a special someone in hand, all polished up in a sea-green blouse and tan shorts.

"Nice to meet you, Madam Chang." He shakes her hand. "Our resident Auror has detailed your many trade exploits. Tell me, is there still a ban on Primrose's Wand Polish?"

"You've done your homework!" Lisa says, delighted. "They recalled over a thousand bottles contaminated with Demiguise droppings, sir. I would say the business is positively _constipated_."

"Call me Newt." He sneaks a grin. "Why Kingsley, you never mentioned her delightful sense of humor! Where have you been all my life?"

"Careful, old-timer. If Porpentina ever catches you—"

As the two men have at it, it is then that the Chinese woman notes the girl peeking out from behind the Magizoologist, nose and cheek pressed into his purple coat.

"Hello there," she says, sticking out a well-manicured hand, to which Sun puts out her own. No shyness there; in fact, maybe even a little curiosity. "Are you the little mermaid I've heard so much about?"

"Where?!" Cho jumps out of her seat, practically beaming when she spots the other child, who sweats nervously under all the scrutiny. No one ever paid her much mind under the ocean, except for all the bad reasons.

"My name is Cho. What's yours? Where's your tail? Do you sing?"

The girl shakes her head and points to her mouth, where a great, mutilated rift appears in the place of a tongue. Cho frowns, not in disgust but rather a mixture of worry and disappointment.

"An unfortunate incident with dark magic," Newt explains. "Kingsley found her stranded in East Sussex half-dead, most likely exiled from a clan closer to Taiwan. Though there is still much to learn about her condition, for the most part Sun has made a miraculous recovery and communicates very well in writing."

"I see." A soft look dawns upon Lisa's face at the notebook in Sun's pocket. The mother reaches out to pry the girl gently away from her hiding spot, running her fingers through long, reddish brown hair. It is a comforting gesture, and the girl preens at the attention. "What a strong girl you've been, Sun. Cho-Cho, why don't the two of you play outside while the grown-ups talk?"

"I thought you'd never ask!" the child replies. Determined to make a better impression, she holds out a calloused hand to Sun, who automatically fits her smaller palm into it. "Do you like Quidditch? My favorite team is the Tutshill Tornados. They're the best English team, I won't let you say otherwise. Er, I mean write."

In wonderment, the mermaid follows the older girl out, scribbling down a "what is Quidditch?" Cho launches into a passionate explanation, to which the adults laugh.

Once out of earshot, Lisa asks, "Has there been no word on the relatives?"

"Last week, we finally pieced together the bigger picture," Kingsley answers. "A witch or wizard factors in somewhere, seeing as our patient isn't fully mermaid and can perform accidental magic, but her siren mother hasn't been sighted yet. We had a specialist follow Sun's descriptions, but there are just no signs of her anywhere. I'm afraid to look through the morgues."

"Have faith, dear Auror." The magizoologist claps his back. "She will turn up eventually. She's clearly raised a daughter with so much love."

"Let me know if I can be helpful in any way," Lisa says. "I love her already, boys. You came to the right single lady."

"I can help with the fees and paperwork. They don't do adoption like they used to."

"Thank you, old friend. You need a raise."

"You know, he has been footing the hospital bills from day one," Newt adds. "I just stay for the baked goods and mermaid."

"Animal," Kingsley mumbles and gets zapped in the ribcage. He coughs and turns to Lisa. "When can you bring her home?"

"I was actually thinking today!" Lisa excitedly pulls out a ticket. "Prepared in advance for one more passenger, and don't you dare tell me to return it."

The wizards exchange relieved looks and lead the merry way.

* * *

Separation anxiety has never set in faster than when Sun parts from Nebula, her first friend on land. Kingsley is to deliver the foal to its original pack in the Forbidden Forest, but almost loses his hand again in the process. The siren steps in to communicate a truce, hands on either side of a sleek beak.

 _We will meet again,_ she silently conveys, I _promise._

When the mermaid exits the building after hugging her caretakers, Lisa does a double-take and nearly sprains something.

"O-oh my, where did all your hair go?" she splutters, as she pushes what little luggage Sun has onto the platform: some books, a dress and comb, and a jar of suspicious trinkets. "Wasn't I just brushing it?"

Cho giggles conspiratorially—because _of course_ she volunteered as the hairdresser—and runs her fingers through the cropped look. The younger girl doesn't mind at all, writing her response before the trio board the train.

'Someone needed it more than I did.'

The next week, when Augusta Longbottom brings her grandson to St. Mungo's, they are one step closer to the mother and hero they once knew; the wig is the perfect length and shade of brown.

* * *

The Chang Estate is out in the country, far from the hospital, far from the sea, a little ways away from the steelopolis called Motherwell. Steam, distinctive and thick, billows along the winding scenery as a whistle cries loud and true.

Sun taps her blunt nails on the windowsill, remembering that the last time she was on a train was for her older brother's funeral. Though Fatima had helped alleviate the pain, even in this new life, Sun feels remorseful and out of her depth.

Someone clearing their throat rouses the girl from her reminiscence. Sun looks to the doorway, expecting to see Cho and Lisa back from the "loo"—she is still getting the hang of British terminology—when a small creature with scallop-shaped ears enters with a basket of packaged sweets. She leans forward in wonder at the odd arrival.

"'ello little missus," it squeaks. "Me name's Cubby. I have goodies for the missus from the other missus and madam. Oh! I shan't have said it! Ruined the surprise."

Immediately, a written response is in order.

'How do you do? I'm Sun. You're very cute. What might you be?'

Its gold eyes impossibly widen. Trembling, the creature drops the basket with a _hiccup!_ and vanishes on the spot, effectively scaring Sun three feet out of her seat. Her expression is the equivalent of an exclamation mark.

When the Changs return, expecting to see a happy mermaid nibbling on Pumpkin Pasties, they find her staring hard into space. Eventually, the girl looks between Lisa and Cho and scribbles furiously.

'What just happened?! There was this little creature and it was offering me food, but then it was gone!'

"You met Cubby? She's so sweet." Cho plops down next to her, grabbing a snack.

'Yes, but she just disappeared! Vanished!'

"I'm so proud!" Lisa says. "You made a house-elf blush!"

'What in the world?'

"They're quite bad at taking compliments," Cho fills in. "Poor Cubby."

As Sun feels her brain implode, her new mother picks up the discarded basket before ushering them out of the compartment. Their baggage is shrunken down to size with a wave of her wand and stored in a coat pocket.

The moment they exit, magic has long been forgotten as the regular world falls back into place, like the dusty station of Sun's memories. A mechanical voice reads aloud available resources and journeys to come. Passengers heave their luggage by the hand, speaking of the weather or how good it feels to be back home and bumping rather often into each other. The child watches on, wondering what would happen if any of them knew about vanishing house-elves or confused mermaids, about the other side of the mirror.

Would they think the grass greener, or is there a catch to all the magic?

"Tsk, we still have to catch another ride," Lisa informs. "I told Harold I'd be back in the office at nine."

In under a minute, she ushers their trio from one side of the station to an alleyway, where she taps on a couple of wrinkled bricks with her wand. Soon, the stones cave to reveal a cozy abode, the size of an average living room, speckled with jars full of herbs and roots. It smells distinctively of rubbing oil and something akin to peanut butter.

The Chinese woman makes a beeline to the single, person-high fireplace, one duckling following along as per routine, the other thoroughly miffed by the magic.

"Mopey-Moby, I know you're there," Lisa calls. "Lurking somewhere in your man-cave again, I see! I'm borrowing the fireplace."

A massive, bespeckled man suddenly slides in on a ladder, fingers tapping along his dusty bookshelf. He looks to be in his fifties, features simultaneously sharp and welcoming, mauve robes patched and burnt in places. Quite the picture-book wizard.

"This gonna be the last time you traipse in 'ere during my coffee break," he says, in some kind of accent. "Why didn't you just use the Floo in London?"

"Can't a mother take her kids on a train ride anymore?"

"Another one? You been busy."

"You make me sound like a tramp one more time, and you're going to wish you had one to comfort you." Lisa unscrews a bottle of dust, glimmering ominously in the light. She hands some to Cho, who excitedly volunteers herself into the empty fireplace. "All right, like we practiced. Show your sister how it's done."

Like sand trickling down an hourglass, the powder pours across the girl's feet; as soon as it makes contact, emerald flames burst past the columns.

"Chang Estate!" Cho yells, consumed not long after by the fires. Sun reaches an arm out in alarm, only to have Lisa take her hand and sprinkle the same material into palm. The fine grains of green stardust produce a warmth of their own.

"Don't worry, Cho-Cho has done this before," Lisa says. "I was fearful my first time, too. The Floo Network takes some getting used to, but it's a common mode of wizarding transportation. You take these sparkles and just say—oh geez, I forget!"

Lisa turns to Moby, who has been eyeing Sun for a good while. She blinks shyly back, inching closer to her guardian for comfort.

"Verbalization isn't doctrine, right? Would the Floo still work if she thinks of the destination hard enough?"

"I don't see why not, could close her eyes for good measure," he replies. "She a mute?"

"It's complicated." Lisa turns back to Sun. "Go on honey, think 'Chang Estate.' The hardest you've ever thought before. If you wind up somewhere else, I'll find you immediately."

She takes off a purple brooch from her breast and pins it to Sun's blouse, mumbling something under her breath.

"This will tell me where you go. Steady now."

The child wants to ask how anyone could transport via fireplace and how jewelry could possibly track someone down, but Lisa's hand is warm and gentle; surely no one with a touch like that means her harm. So Sun steps into the ashes, anxiously breathing through her nose as she throws the powder down.

All light and no heat—she envisions her new home, somewhere without Amir and Fatima and Murong, and teleports straight away, a physical pull straight through her bones. When she opens her eyes, the fireplace is much smaller and cramped, squeezing her down into its sooty deposits. She frantically coughs and spits, wiping her face with equally blackened sleeves.

Someone's firm grip pulls her from the darkness and into waiting arms.

A faint aroma of chocolate and leather. Her apprehension spikes; this is neither Cho nor Lisa.

Slowly, Sun peers up at the stranger, glimpsing early-set wrinkles and scars upon a young face. His light brown hair, flecked gray, frames a kind smile and hazel eyes. He can't be more than thirty, yet seems to have lived in dust and hand-me-downs for his whole life.

But if Sun has to describe him in one word, it would be "safe." The thought is too trusting, and acting her physical age makes her feel vulnerable under his wise gaze. She sees that they are both huddled on the carpet of a bookstore, small and antiquated in its interior, dimly lit as though closed for the day. _Wow_ , the mermaid mouths unconsciously. She'd never seen so many books before, not even in school.

The man rises to grab a sheet of paper and pencil from the counter, nearly hitting a low-hanging lamp on his way. She hides a laugh behind a hand; he seems so distant and refined, yet walks just as she had when first adapting to land again.

'Lost in the Floo?' he writes in a neat script. 'Where did you come from?'

Sun straightens, taking control of the pencil. She is slightly jealous of his handwriting, putting in extra effort to deliver legibility.

'I came here with my new family, but Lisa explained too fast and magic confuses me and I lost my thought. Where am I?'

'Kimberly's Kollektion.'

'Is this a bookstore? Are you the owner? What do you like to read most?'

'Yes, no, and adventure.' He smiles widely. 'My turn: what's your name? How old are you? Are you adopted?'

'Sun! I think I'm eight. Does adopted mean having a new family? I lost my real mother a few months ago.'

Hesitantly, he pats her hand, as though any more pressure would break skin. What an odd fellow; she isn't used to being treated like porcelain.

'I'm sorry to hear that. I lost my mother too, eight years ago.'

Sun touches his arm, mirroring his gesture.

'Are you like me?' she writes and points to her mouth.

'No, I extracted an infected tooth and can't talk much. It's temporarily disarming.' He has this quirky, patient grin now. 'But isn't this more exciting? Like a secret language.'

'I never thought of it like that.' She tilts her head at him. 'I like that.'

A whip-like crack and sparks end their conversation. Lisa looks upon the scene frantically, wand raised high and relief inspiring tears.

"I thought I'd never find you!" she cries, scooping up the mermaid and crushing her to a warm bosom. A sense of amused calm washes over Sun. "Next time we'll do it the old-fashioned way, no more bloody fireplaces—"

The witch notices the bookkeeper then and goes for an embarrassed handshake. "Pardon my intrusion, sir. Thank you for watching over my daughter, I'm sure we've interrupted your matters."

He takes her hand and nods, exchanging a mischievous glance with the siren.

"Not at all," he manages. "She was a delight."

"Now come along dear, let's leave the kind gentleman to his books. I have to get started on dinner, we're ten minutes late."

Before the two Apparate away—which almost causes her to throw up—Sun mouths over Lisa's shoulder, 'What's your name?'

The scar-faced chocolate man waves goodbye, whispering, "Remus. Remus Lupin."

Charming—she would certainly remember that name.


	3. The Moon Has a Shadow

"Keep going like this, you just might end up happy."

—Foggy Nelson, _Daredevil_

III. The Moon Has a Shadow

Lisa finds herself consulting the grocery store clerks often in her endeavors as a mother.

"Fish eat other fish, don't they?"

"Huh?"

"Fish are omnivorous, no?" she tries again.

"Yes..." Arthur the part-timer backs up, hugging the mop closer to him.

"So hypothetically speaking, mermaids would eat fish too?"

"I don't see why not." He scratches his chin in thought, wracking his brain for the last customer who asked him something this bizarre. "I imagine they use seafood to make up for meat. Protein and all that good jazz."

"Right right, so maybe seaweed equals vegetables?"

"But they're not real, so we can't know for sure."

She gets real close to him then and sizes the scrawny white boy up and down. "Anything's possible, son. One morning you'll find yourself spouseless, and the next you're adopting a siren." She claps him on the back, nodding to herself. "Life's funny like that."

"Lisa, is there something you're not telling me?" He leans in then, eyes wide with interest. "I thought we were onto the next stage in this relationship."

"Some day, young grasshopper, when you're ready."

With that, the woman picks up her bags and walks off, Cho and Sun waiting patiently by the newspaper stand. The former rolls her eyes when they exit the store, tucking the leeks and clams away. Sun has the fruits strapped to her back.

"You almost squealed, didn't you?" Cho asks. "No wait, you _did_! That's against the law!"

"Arthur's trustworthy. Besides, he won't be here for long." Lisa smiles conspiratorially. "The tea leaves say there are greater things to come."

Sure enough, in the next week, Arthur Curry transfers to a pet store back in his home state of Maine, where he spends a great deal of time asking his "new friends" about the existence of mermaids—and by friends, he means the guppies and angelfish and minnows. It takes him a while to figure out that he's not crazy, and that he can make a superhero career out of understanding fish.

But being Aquaman can wait; he's going to make some banging bucks down at the pier, training dolphins how to steal wallets. Those world domination plans aren't going to start by themselves!

* * *

'Why is everything in the house blue and purple?' Sun asks one day.

"Because Quidditch," Cho explains. Her cat-eye glasses make the words seem even more ridiculous, body hunched over a copy of _The Quibbler_.

'What does that even mean?'

"Because Quidditch," Lisa calls from her office.

'How can she even _hear_ me write?!'

"Because of the senses we train in Quiddit—"

'Stooop.'

* * *

It takes a little over a month for the little mermaid to adjust to the Changs, particularly their inane schedule that operates primarily on chance, productivity, and competition. Living underwater halfway across the world effectively destroyed any measurement of time in Sun's system, so having a set wake-up and clean-up time becomes a part of her humanization.

It's awful, to say the least.

8:30 A.M: Lisa and Cho get ready for the day. Omelette-making, omelette-tasting. The enchanted brooms are hard at work sweeping up eggshells and dust. Sun sniffles and rolls over in bed.

9:15 A.M: Cho updates her Quidditch scoreboards and Lisa files a trade report. They see who can collect the most laundry around the house. Sun mumbles in her sleep.

10:00 A.M: Lisa leaves for work and Cho finishes a novel on wandlore. Sun almost wakes up— _almost._

11:27 A.M: Cho gets ready for lunch and counts down on an imaginary watch, before hearing her little sister amble down the stairs and squint away the sunshine. They watch as their mother's pre-bake spell works on the dessert.

12:10 P.M: They take the lunch outside and learn about each other; that is to say, about how deep Cho's love for sports runs and how Sun fears no animal, not even the wasp that goes straight for the sandwiches. Her older sister promptly blacks out.

2:00 P.M: Sun hates how Ms. Temple, their private tutor, makes her feel insufficient for being mute. "You can't pronounce a spell," she says, "you can't do the spell." Who came up with rules like that? What about all the other disabled or impaired witches in the world? Surely they were much better teachers, at the very least.

5:00 P.M: Cho breaks or crashes something: could be a vase, shelf, broom that flies _into the tapestry wait nOT THE CHINA—_

6:13 P.M: Lisa comes home and cringes into the next dimension. She spends a good pound fixing the house.

7:00 P.M: Dinner in town. Nobody wants to do dishes, but they sure love to eat Thai. Like every. Single. Day. Seriously, doesn't pad thai ever get old? Eggrolls don't "spice things up," Cho. Does the world get better when you lie to yourself?

8:45 P.M: Some kind of family activity, usually involving Lisa and Cho competing for top Quidditch fan-holler. Sun takes a nap on the carpet to the sounds of happiness.

9:30 P.M: Since the one shower is busted, the women fight tooth and nail to get to the other bathroom first. Sun's satisfied with washing her hair in the sink.

10:00 P.M: Everyone except the little mermaid is fast asleep. She misses Murong, because no one and nothing will ever replace the siren. More than anything, when Sun thinks about the ocean, she misses their time together and her own voice, how much easier it would be to tell her story if only she could sing. _Did the lovers reunite at last_ , she wonders. _Allah, someone up there, please tell me I didn't become this way for nothing._

3:18 A.M: Sun passes out from exhaustion. Cho wakes up to tuck her in again. Years later, they still share the bed; in fact, sometimes Lisa comes in too, because why not.

* * *

"Up! Get up! Now!"

"Where's my paper, boy?"

"Give me that!"

If the green-eyed child has to choose what body part to sacrifice, in any given near-death situation, or even a "would you rather" scenario, it would be the ears. Sometimes, his cousin helps when they read bedtime stories together, but those times are few and far between; auntie would never let them stay in that safe bubble for long.

So much noise... endless... drowning in it...

* * *

Month three of living with her new family, and Sun dreams of the boy again. She also dreams of a young woman with platinum hair and a curious lilt to her voice, as though always about ready to cast a spell. he visions vary, from a brown room to a pink shore to a golden field.

The night will begin on the backs of her heels, clicking across planks like a winding music box. Pale hands pick out an assortment of jarred goods for the next magical project.

Then _they_ —Sun and the gossamer lady—feel a tingling in their left ear and pass into the next scene running, where someone else is submerged halfway in sparkling waters, eyes alight with mischief. This person has never looked so happy and youthful, hair tucked across her shoulders in braided rivulets of chocolate.

"You're late!" her strong, Mermish accent teases.

"You're early!" the blonde woman replies.

Sharp, webbed hands reach around a slender neck and foreheads sweetly meet. They stay like this for who knows how long, humming and swaying in the dying day. _Their routine,_ Sun thinks; _their could-have-been_ , she cries. The hollow sound of her heart falling into the pit of her stomach can only be described as loss.

 _Who are they? Why are they so happy?_

And it ends like that, salt water and sand washing out the image into the blue moonlight. The mermaid opens her eyes and finds the space next to her dented and empty. She shakes the covers off and searches for the missing person, only to see a slight figure leaning against the balcony railings, humming to some indistinguishable tune.

Sun slips into the fresh air and hugs Cho around the waist, face pressed into the side of a dark head. They are almost the same height, equally comfortable, and she feels the reverberation of laughter through her cheek.

 _What are you thinking?_ her hug conveys.

"The moon wanted to talk." Cho works around the embrace and boops her nose. She's gotten into the habit of doing this to Sun, because Lisa doesn't appreciate fingers anywhere near her nostrils.

Sensing another question in their midst, the nine-year-old continues. "I tell the moon everything about my day, because she must be lonely up there. She's big and round and doesn't fit in with the stars. Who does she talk to when the sun sets? She doesn't even have a shadow, because sometimes she _becomes_ one. I wish I could do that."

Silence.

"Do you ever miss your real mum?" Cho asks.

 _Every day_. Sun would say, but she stays still against the cold air. This isn't about the mermaid right now; she wants to hear the rest of Cho's story.

"I miss my dad sometimes. Ever since he left, I lost someone to talk to. My world got smaller. Reading makes me happy, Quidditch makes me happier, but when no one is looking, sometimes they mean nothing to me. I tear up the papers or fold them up for the fire. Mum tries, she does, but I don't think she likes the idea of us on broomsticks, even though I want to play in the big leagues someday. I'm not the only person who'll get hurt out there. I dunno, I guess dad just wouldn't be like that. He supported me playing Quidditch."

Sun rocks Cho through the rambling, their breath fanning out like the wings of sparrows buffed against yew boughs. This is her first time hearing about him, the mysterious medicine man that stole the heart of Madam Chang. Until now, he's been a blot in the family tree, his face missing from pictures and portraits around the house like an unrelenting stain.

"I wish you'd been here earlier," the Chinese girl says suddenly. She sounds close to crying, but she is more Lisa than anything, dark eyes flashing with flickering strength. "I wish you'd met dad. I wish you'd tell me I'm right. That he's not a bad guy. Mummy made a mistake. She must have."

The girls are facing each other now, hugging so closely that there is no space for bad thoughts to interrupt; silent comfort, like a river leading the wayward traveler home.

 _I'm here now_.

* * *

Distractions. Many distractions, to keep her from the cosmic pain of loss. Sun feels the smiles grow claws into her skin, voices of doubt swirling in her head.

 _I thought I was happy here_ , the Sun side thinks. _I thought I was starting to love them._

 _You are! Everyone has bad days_ , "Sungjin" echoes. _Don't lose faith now._

 _Yeah, maybe it's the dress_ , "Suha" muses. _Ask for pants next time, they make you feel better._

 _But I'm a girl! That's what we're supposed to wear!_

 _By whose choice?_

 _Murong never made you feel like you had to wear anything!_

 _Murong still saw me as a girl!_

 _Murong isn't here anymore._

 _Stop pretending to be your mother._

 _We don't have a mother!_

Sun pulls at her short brown hair angrily, willing the mental battle to end. It's just a blasted garden party, why does she have to make such a big deal about it?

 _What are you, a bloody eight year-old? Oh, right. You're supposed to be._

In the shade of the greenery, with sunlight filtering through the spruces, Sun hides near the estate pond, an old lazy moor reflecting nothing on its surface. Had she requested for dress pants, she certainly would feel better about crawling around, but in her yellow sundress, worthy of church, she weaves uneasily through the reeds.

The road wanders up the frothy waterbed, past wheat and corn, up to the white veranda, where Lisa entertains two visiting the MacDougals and the Patils. The families come every so often for business matters, and now for the first time, they bring the kids along to break bread. The parents went to school together rather "amorously," as they kindly put it. None of the kids understood the undertones besides Sun, who promptly turned red.

Speaking of children, none of them are in sight—

"Found her, found her! Pam, quick, the arm!"

"Pat, I got the leg! The leggg!"

"Don't break my sister, you goobers!"

Post-struggle, four small bodies go tumbling into the water, hairs splitting and mouths spluttering. The mermaid is winded, obviously disgruntled from having her personal moment shattered. Freshwater is also _very_ itchy.

Padma and Parvati Patil are sinking like the Titanic, arms locked in an attempt to swim. Cho is right behind, kicking like a frog and pushing the Indian girls toward safety. By the time they are all out of the pond, Sun's clothes are partially dry and her displeasure has simmered to a mellow ember. She throws her mostly dry scarf to her sister, whose smile beams sheepishly into the afternoon.

"They helped me track you down," she says. "Mum wouldn't let me use their dog."

"He has a name, y'know." Padma throws a braid around her shoulder smartly.

"P. Diddy," Parvati finishes. "The P is for our family. Diddy's just sweet."

Somehow, somewhere, Sun feels like she's heard the silly label before. She draws her knees up to her chin and raises an entertained eyebrow at the twins.

"You shouldn't make such a sad face at a dinner party, Susie."

The mermaid points at the sun, correcting Padma.

"Sorry," the twin says, wringing her hair out.

"Where is our other playmate today?" Cho asks. "I didn't see Morag at the big people's table."

Shame, really. Sun truly wants to meet the little MacDougal; her mother and father are renowned astronomers, and she wonders if their daughter shows half as much interest in the stars.

"I think she's down with Lumpago?" Parvati suggests.

"No, it's like Ludega…" Padma trails off.

Sun mouths _Lumbago?_ to Cho, who smiles and calls out the answer.

"Nerrrd," the twins simultaneously hoot.

"At least us siblings read," Cho snorts. "Maybe that's just a Chang thing though, good athletically _and_ academically. Can't beat us in those categories, sorry ladies."

"Well, uh." Parvati ponders her response, before impulsively pointing a pudgy finger. "At least we have stronger opinions!"

"Pfft, what is that supposed to mean?"

"We speak our minds, unlike… oh…"

The word "speak" hangs in the air tauntingly, miserably, unable to be taken back like excess toothpaste. It sticks to their mouths, heavy and uncomfortable, but Sun shrugs, as if to say _can't argue with that_.

Sighing in relief, Padma and Parvati bolt away from the pond. They look back at the mermaid, equally stubborn and apologetic. Cho quietly sits next to her sister, avoiding Sun's curious stares. Her black hair is long, styled traditionally with pins, the pride of China. She lets it loose and parts her fingers through it.

"I don't like them," Cho blurts. "They made fun of you."

 _You make fun of me too_ , Sun mouths.

"Of course, _I_ can do that! I hate it when _other_ people make fun of my mermaid."

The possessive pronoun makes Sun smile. She falls right into the girl's lap, peering up at a supreme pout: lips puckered to the left, nostrils extra wide, saltiness oozing out of the pores.

 _Cute_ , Sun teases and gets an aggressive nose-boop.

"They don't even know you. They don't even try!"

The mermaid shrugs again. _You know me._

Cho's mood eases up after that. They hold hands on their way back to the house. Sun draws small circles into her golden skin, as they discard their dirty dress shoes on the steps. The Patil twins have occupied themselves with cake, thoughtless remarks long forgotten. Their parents look rather sheepish for the overall mess, Lisa zoning in on her daughters with a hawk's eye.

"Sun-sun, I have decided that you're far too nice," Cho announces later. "The next time someone says anything rude about you, they better catch these hands."

Soundlessly, Sun throws her head back and wheezes like a seal, committing the comment thoroughly to memory. The next day, when Cho is asked what she wants for her upcoming tenth birthday, she says a black belt in karate.

Nobody in the house stops laughing until she actually gets one…

… within a week. The instructor is ready to up and quit his twenty-year career, while Sun grins and hugs her sister.

 _We have another hustler in the_ _family,_ she thinks.

* * *

What a maddening thing attachment is: to want to be there for someone as much as possible, fall asleep with them after some hot cocoa, walk miles for them in beat-up sneakers.

 _Blip, blip, bloop._

The sudden heat wave sticks to skin and bone, pounding down on the dry earth and scattering its citizens to the indoors; the children, to the arcades. Sun melts for a good hour against the machine, cheek imprinted on the warm plastic coat as sweat dribbles down her violet turtleneck. People have definitely given her the side-eye for her foolish fashion choices, but she is much more concerned with Cho's quest for redemption.

"I have to beat your highscore," the girl breathlessly announces. Pacman moves across the screen, consuming all in his path. "I can't believe you got it in one go, I've never seen _anyone_ do that. Not even with magic!"

 _Aw, she just pouted again! What a cute sore loser._

...

Weird—Sun's become weird, attached.

She used to think that the strangest part of living in their too blue house, by the too green countryside, was how invested the Changs were in the non-magical world. Lisa only mentions her Ministry work offhandedly and keeps very little enchanted documentation lying around. Instead, their bookshelves are filled with human history books and young adult novels, as well as the occasional pulp fiction and dictionary.

The madam also rarely uses wizard currency, opting to purchase household goods around the neighborhood and local supermarket rather than staples like Diagon Alley. She has her girls take from a "reward" jar of pounds when they complete books and assignments, fostering the incentive to work hard and play hard. The point system often leads to family excursions to cafes and the occasional drive-in theater, where Sun would watch classics like _Grease_ and _The Breakfast Club_ over some popcorn and take-out.

Thankfully, these trips take time away from Quidditch and the London Stock Exchange, two activities that never fail to make Sun cringe into the next dimension. How Cho, an upcoming eleven year-old, even developed a passion for economics in the first place still baffles the mermaid, but to each their own. She and Lisa can argue about the Queen's finances all they want and leave Sun to her bugs and plants.

But back to Pacman Tuesday.

Cho slams her forehead onto the buttons and groans, losing for the seventeenth time in a row. She has spent nearly half of her allowance on vengeance, so Sunny pays for their mint chocolate chip, thin arm hooked through a firm one. The older girl has really taken a shine to athleticism, excelling at both flying and martial arts. Loud and proud to Sunny's still waters, the depths of which no one has yet to breach. If not for her alien body and poor health, maybe Sunny could hug the sky too; handling a broomstick doesn't look _that_ hard.

"One of these days, I'll have you all figured out," Cho says, "and when it happens, you owe me all the ice cream in Scotland."

What a tall order! Sunny smiles into her free sleeve, as though conveying, _good luck with that._ But Cho doesn't leave anyone alone until she's had her way.

When they traverse across the lawn and arrive home, the door opens without prompting and Lisa emerges with a stamped envelope. They've never seen her so excited before.

"Sweetie, your letter has arrived! We've got to try that new buffet in town immediately!"

Hogwarts. Someone must've had a lot of fun with that name. Sunny wonders absentmindedly if they recruit magical creatures, and then she wonders if there are others like her out there.

* * *

She decides that parents—mothers—are quite temporary in life, for they seem to conveniently disappear when daughter needs them most.

After a May shower, the skies are clear and cloudless in the garden. Another moment, a blue jay flies too close to the sun, drops in terror, and paints the world below red.

No one pays much attention to it, though. Certainly not the spring flowers. They push out from the brimming eaves of trees, glorious in their pastel purples, before ultimately falling from their mother tree. Some flutter along the wind and never come back; others take up the ground below, spread like ashes to feed the family roots. Whether anyone remembers the fallen flowers or not, spring will rise again, just as it always does.

Sun buries the blue jay beneath the mossy bird bath, wiping pearls from her lashes. She witnessed the descent and the feathers splayed in a crimson crown, an unwilling coronation. She remembers reading about something like this before, _Icarus and the sun_ _,_ in a classroom far, far away.

When the ceremony is over, she looks up into an iron-colored glass ornament, set like a star atop the bath, and sees her reflection: a wild beige child, willowy and flat and soft in all the awkward parts. Her reddish brown hair sticks out, barely reaching her forehead and ears, and pink sand dusts high cheekbones.

Above all, she sees the dead. The flowers, the bird, her Pakistani past: they are in her face, gaze, the scales lining the column of her throat down to her hips, speckled and growing in brass wonder. She doesn't have to hide them at home, but she's always surprised, like she'll never get used to being part fish.

Sun presses a hand to the bridge of a slim nose, feeling her old life there the most. Different, darker fingers used to run up and down the same length in mild vanity, before poking at a smaller, rounder face.

"Suhaaa, I want your nose!" Little sister huffed and puffed. "Mine is so flat."

"Fatimaaa, I want your heart!" Big sister blew her away and lifted her into strong arms. "It's the perfect size."

The memory adds salt to her wounds. Sun has no luck with muscles now, and this too comes as a shock. She used to be the loudest, strongest person she knew. A film of sadness comes down on her eyes. She no longer knows a life of constant defense and violence, but in her fists, she still remembers how the boys caved and ran. In her stomach, she recalls earning money for a food insecure household. In her feet, she knows all the sandy roads that led "home."

And in her heart, she keeps Murong, humming under her skin and singing in her veins.

The memories always play like the premiere to a tragic movie. Saturday dinner is a wet blanket, as she slips her chopsticks in and out of her yellowtail soup lethargically. Earlier, Cho downed two bowls before rushing off to try her new broom polish. Their mother felt it mandatory to stock up, especially with Hogwarts on the horizon.

"You barely touched your food," Lisa comments. Even with her makeup removed, the woman could pass off as their older sister. "Was it the ginger? I know you're not used to it, but it's good for you."

Sun smiles and shakes her head; looking put-together deflects concern. But Lisa sees right through her, elegant eyebrows raised and mouth set into a firm line.

"Perhaps you haven't adjusted to more than just the ginger," she finally says and sits. "Perhaps it's _us_ you're worried about."

It's a direct blow, like a car hitting the breaks and propelling the driver into the airbag.

"Whenever you have that look on your face," Lisa continues, "it means you're forcing yourself and holding back."

Unraveling, the mermaid tries to deny it, but her adoptive mother continues to pick apart the situation. Sun can take a missing Murong but not an intuitive Lisa.

"I know there are stories you can't explain. Who knows what you'd really like to say, if only you could. I was hoping you would feel safe and comfortable quickly with us, but in contrast, you don't want to impose. I understand that, and I know I can't replace the family you had before, but I'm here to support you. It'll be the two of us once Cho-Cho leaves."

Sun feels a kind hand pat her head, smoothing her hair out like the ocean to a pebble. She is carried along the current, unable to find her footing against such sweet words.

"Sungjin Chang, you are already part of our family, and I know you have a lot to say. We Chang women always do. When you're unhappy, don't keep it all inside. At the very least, write out your concerns."

With that, Lisa lets her swim in those thoughts. A weight lifts; she isn't an outsider looking in.

 _Chang_ , Sun thinks. _Sungjin Chang_.

She thought no one had noticed, for they seemed so absent-minded and happy in a world full of the magical impossible. Even if she came clean about how jumping into adoption made her feel, how underwater rebirth and a half-human life made her question her existence, she's sure that Lisa wouldn't abandon her now. She would listen.

 _Someday, I'll tell_ you, Sun thinks. _Please wait for me._

Maybe it's because Sunny has known loss, or seen the blue jay plunge to its doom without warning, or the flowers wait for life. Or maybe she wants a mother to mean more than just sacrifice and absence, to give the idea of family another chance. The hand upon her head felt like hope. She may have lost her body twice over, her heart mutilated and displaced, but kindness lasts forever.

And if that's the case, Sunny wants to change herself, so that this kindness will be reciprocated. Take the warm hand and never let go.


	4. Family

**A/N:** Very long chapter, but for good reason! Enjoy.

* * *

"Sometimes the truth isn't good enough, sometimes people deserve more. Sometimes people deserve to have their faith rewarded."

—Bruce Wayne, _The Dark Knight_

IV. Family

 _Kimberly's Kollektion_ emerges from the jade ashes, dim and caramel like a pair of sad, familiar eyes. Webbed feet pad against the warm planks, twisting and spinning to bring their owner through the dusty land of books.

When opportunity finally waltzes through the door, a little past 1 A.M., Remus Lupin drops a load onto his foot. It takes him a couple of minutes to process the swear-worthy pain.

"Now where did you come from, little one?"

Sun thrusts a sooty notebook into his face in response.

'Do you hire children?' She blinks modestly up at the middle-aged wizard, body tucked awkwardly under an old counter and face smudged endearingly: the runaway charm.

But she has yet to win. Despite looking more rag than man at times, Remus has an iron will and sends her home without blinking minutes later. He who barely flinches at a stubbed toe will take much more to convince. So she comes back to him in the moonlight time and time again, each instance hidden in a different place. Shelf, desk, behind the tea rack, sometimes hugging him from behind and others sprinting another direction.

He has to wear down sooner or later, she's sure of it, but curse the way he sighs like exasperated parent and still apparates them away. How did he know her address, anyway? Not that she isn't a stalker herself. Somehow, the only place she can ever connect the Floo to is this bookstore.

Briefly, as Remus facepalms, Sun wonders why he stays up so late. Certainly he isn't being paid for overtime, and there are only so many dust bunnies to chase. Where is Kimberly? Isn't this her shop?

"Why do you insist on working here?" At last the man asks.

'Why do you insist on me not?' she counters.

"You're ten. You shouldn't be so concerned with money."

Sun rolls her eyes. Somehow, his stubbornness reminds her of Cho, but he's far quieter and faster at building barriers.

'It's not about the money. I want to be useful.'

Remus blinks back his surprise.

"Your mother is Lisa Chang."

He says this, like it explains everything. The mermaid blinks innocently.

"Department of International Magical Trading Standards Body, wrote an excellent thesis on a modified strain of wolfsbane…"

Scribble scribble scribble.

'First of all, that's amazing! Lisa never talks about herself enough. Second of all, does her reputation transfer to me? Anywho, chocolate man, I want to do something with this life and be a good daughter, so please let me start somewhere.'

There is a beat of silence, enough time for Sun to regret her decisions, before the bookkeeper laughs aloud. It's a rich, subdued sound, bubbling apple cider in a clay mug. He stands and pats down his vest, finally defeated by humor. Walking off to the broom closet, he only stops to look back when no one trails behind him.

"Well? Are you going to change the world with me or not? And by that, I mean make this floor shine."

Flushing excitedly, she scrambles to his side at once. Years from now, Remus will encounter a certain Hufflepuff with the same name-calling tendencies and reflect fondly.

'So where is Kimberly?'

"Nonexistent. My classmate Biff Harrington runs this store and is in Italy for the year with his wife."

 _What sadistic hobgoblin names their kid Biff?_ she thinks.

Shelf. Sweep. Separate. Every two days, Sun reports for duty and the odd couple works through the ungodly hours. The front windows go from gray blue to blue gray, night blue to the blue of day. The girl has developed quite the repertoire of sneakiness, managing to return to Cho's unconscious side without stirring anyone awake.

There is a curious mix between non-magical fiction and wizarding books in the shop, which both seem to sell out at a fast rate. Thankfully, she doesn't have to deal with the customers and is only on cleaning duty after they're all gone. Remus must be superhuman, to be able to take every available shift.

Increasingly, Sun notices a shift in his behavior and deep eye-bags as the weeks move along. Everything about him is sickly, his figure more often than not affected by weight loss and fatigue. He reminds the siren of the homeless back in Pakistan on particularly hot and diseased days.

In an effort to cheer him up from whatever ails him—he avoids being honest and upfront about his personal life—Sun plops Remus down on the plush carpet during their break and cracks open Beedle the Bard's fairytales. Though she's only known him for so long, she noted his favorite literature selections and fondness for oral storytelling.

He would make a great teacher, and Sun secretly wishes he'd replace Ms. Temple as her private tutor. That old woman needed to kick the bucket already. And while Remus doesn't quite like the sound of his own voice, she does. Sometimes, the mermaid even falls asleep to his endless thinking aloud. Slowly but surely, they became comfortable with each other, and neither person knew what to do with this information, both secretive of their pasts.

'I'm happy this writer doesn't write bad wolves.' Sun gives one medieval illustration a good inspection. A male "Red Riding Hood" meets a werewolf in the forest and plays along with his facade, wishing to press forward on his knightly journey.

"There are no good wolves," Remus replies, one word at a time. He sounds confident and frightened all at once, but she saves it for a later date.

'Nobody gives them a chance!' she writes. 'People are ten times scarier, and I know wolves think so too. I read it somewhere. They don't mess around with humans.'

"I take it you're an animal lover?"

'Takes one to know one.' She says nonchalantly and hits herself mentally later. Not only did that sound wrong, it _felt_ wrong. So far, Remus hasn't said anything about her peculiar features (though he's probably got her all figured out) but she isn't exactly in the business of advertising herself—especially the feet, making a note to wear socks more often, even when they cramp up her style.

Turning away and tossing the book to the side, the girl misses the man's thoughtful expression. Her head comes down on the floor, back pressed into the carpet fabric and notebook blocking the lamplight.

'Remus, what is a Muggle?' she asks, effectively changing the subject.

"Non-magical people," the man answers. He raises an eyebrow. "Your mother never discussed this?"

'She never calls them Muggles. Just people. In most of the stories I've read, it's always used in a mean way.'

"You seem to have given this a lot of thought." Remus shifts onto one side. "Some use Muggle in a derogatory manner, but others use it fondly. Many wizards and witches are half-blooded, which means one of their parents is non-magical or a Muggle-born."

Sun rolls onto her side and watches her companion reach into his shabby coat pocket, fumbling around for something.

'Muggle sounds like mugger or mug. So could non-magical people really be bad, or are they like cups? Don't cups have capacities? Does that imply that they can handle more than we think they can? A reflection of human potential?'

Remus smiles at her tangent. "Are you implying that my mother was a drinking container?"

'She was probably more like a flask. Refined taste. I mean, she gave birth to a man like you, so she had to be living on the edge.'

"You and your riddles."

'Do you drink? Lisa sometimes does, but not too much. She has Asian glow, you know.'

"... No comment."

'Okay!' Sun sits up, scribbling happily. 'I've decided to use Muggle fondly.'

And so the distance closes and closes. Remus slides a tan box to her, about the size of a quart and wrapped in parchment. Sun palms the prism and finds a loose slip to tear from; a watery smile falls across her lips. A rose-gold quill winks inside a black case, long and decorated by silver beads at its point. She peers up at her employer like a subdued doe.

"With just a little magic exposure, it will write for you. Just until you figure something else out." Remus crosses his legs and reaches for another fairytale collection. "I will be going on a leave of absence for a couple of weeks and wanted to give this to you beforehand—"

He gets launched into the book pile within seconds.

* * *

Two weeks. The green-eyed boy is discovered two weeks after running away from the wretched drive and living on the streets, in his tenth summer of existence.

This year, a homeless man gives him a box of chocolates for his birthday, snatched from a drugstore. He eats them until sirens grow ear-shatteringly close and the world spins out from under his bare feet.

The policeman is nice about whole ordeal. He holds a big, gentle hand to the boy's back and guides him from the car and up the driveway, where the child will surely never see the light of day again. But how can the man know this? How can anyone know, when the monsters in that house throw on human skins and pearly smiles?

Long after the policeman drives away, the child closes his eyes and dives off the plank, bracing for the impact. The healing shower water after his beating is what really breaks him. That night, he drowns in his tears, surfacing only in his dreamscape, where he reaches out and takes a small hand on the shoreline…

* * *

Carried by a magical wind, a little blue crane flits by and lands in a bed of soft curls. It cleans the undersides of its wings, unbothered by the extra creases in its paper skin. Sun plucks it off her head and blows it back to the artist, receiving another one soon after.

Padma sends her a sheepish smile from her table of origami, hands never pausing once at their station; between the twins, she is the better multitasker. At the Patil residency in Surrey County, the two girls are home alone; Cho and Parvati were out shopping with the adults, the former needing books and supplies for her upcoming school departure.

Unlike the Chang estate, this house sits on a neighborhood incline and looks rather normal, save for the most vivid murals of fruit Sun has ever seen. Why, there's even a still life of durian; she never thought she'd see the spiky fruit again, given its lack of notoriety in Europe. She might just ask Remus if magical fruits are a thing…

"I'm sorry for what Pat said last time," Padma chimes. "You're actually really nice."

The mermaid returns to reality. Truth be told, the mermaid had already banished the incident from her memory but nods anyway. She decides that perhaps siblings are meant to separately bond with people before reconvening. That way, their individuality rings true before anything else. Padma's level-headedness, for one, reveals itself now in the absence of her blunt sister.

Soon, she wanders over to Sun and plops down. "I'm kind of jealous that Cho is going to school," the Indian girl confesses. "I've never been to any school before. Have you?"

Sun hesitates before shaking her head. It won't do her any good to remember the last night she had studied for a pre-calculus exam; she'd never prayed so hard in all her Islamic career.

Pulling out the special quill from her itchy long-sleeve, Sun watches happily as it writes her response. Padma blinks in fascination.

'Do you want to go to Hogwarts too?'

"Of course," she answers. "I want to learn how to do magic and start inventing things. I can only make origami right now, but one day, I want to transfigure glass and metals, even living things. The possibilities are endless."

Sun smiles and wonders what kind of face the other girl would make if she knew about robots and engineering. Sadly, that would be another decade away, if time served correctly.

"Don't you want to get _your_ letter?"

'I suppose,' comes the vague response. 'If that's where I must be.'

Padma almost looks personally affronted, but simply goes back to folding a dragon.

"You'll definitely be there," she says, "and we'll be in the same year! It's so exciting. Hopefully we get sorted into our parents' houses."

'Houses?' Sun perks up. She thought it was just some boarding school.

"Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin."

'What's the difference?'

Padma sets down her feisty yellow dragon and moves onto a pink butterfly. She recites, as if from memory, "Gryffindors are brave at heart. Hufflepuffs are just and loyal. Ravenclaws are witty and learned. Slytherins are… cunning." A pause. "Mum and dad have never said good things about that one. They don't really like it."

'Does that mean you dislike them, too?'

"I mean... Pansy Parkinson's entire family has been Slytherins and she's a bully. That must mean mum and dad are right. All the bullies end up there."

 _Note to self, avoid this Pansy at all costs_ , Sun thinks.

'Maybe they're not _all_ bad, if they can go to a school as important as Hogwarts and contribute to the wizarding world.'

"That… makes sense." The girl nods. "All right then, I dare us to find a good Slytherin when we get to school!"

The mermaid grins from ear to ear, obviously delighted by their blossoming camaraderie.

'What houses were our parents in?'

"Mummy was in Hufflepuff and daddy was in Ravenclaw. I think Madam Chang was in Ravenclaw too, she's too brilliant for the other ones."

Halting her origami, Padma suddenly adds, "I think you'll be a great witch. You're always reading big books and asking big questions, and... and you don't let anyone stop you from being part of the conversation. I hope we can be in the same house together."

Silence. Just as the child feels her hands go clammy, Sun aims straight for the red square and folds into a shape. Eventually, she puts it in Padma's front shirt pocket and walks off to the restroom with a slight spring in her step, leaving the other girl gaping.

When the twins reunite later, Parvati asks what's so special about a red paper heart.

"Oh, I don't know." Padma cups her grin in one hand and thumbs the origami with the other. "It just feels like a promise, doesn't it?"

* * *

"Mum, why did you buy Sun so much paper? Did Padma talk you into it? It's _everywhere_! There's even some in my sock drawer."

"Because someone in the family has finally shown an interest in art. Now finish your green onions or I'm taking your broom away."

"Psst, Sun…"

"NOW."

* * *

Somehow, walking through brick walls never gets old. One minute, you're among the fumbling and bumbling working class, and the next, you're weaving through silk robes and owl feathers like there's no tomorrow. September, in all its sleepiness though, happens to be a particularly special month.

Today, Cho Chang embarks on her journey to witchhood, and she couldn't be more upset. Platform 9 ¾ gets bleaker and bleaker with the prospect of imminent separation. Is growing up supposed feel like the end of something?

"Why can't Sun come with me?" Cho whines. "It's not like she's that big anyway. I can hide her. There's supposed to be a lake too. She can swim all she wants."

"First of all, Cho-Cho," Lisa begins, "Sun isn't a pet. Yes, she's kind of a fish, but she's a growing girl just like yourself. Second, she can't be in freshwater for too long. You know this."

"But who's going to protect her when I'm gone? No offense mum, but you're bollocks at hand-to-hand combat."

"Language!"

" _Fine._ If you won't let me take my mermaid, make sure she writes to me," Cho declares. "Like every second."

"No."

"Minute."

"No."

"Hour—"

"I did _not_ raise you to make such irresponsible calculations!" Lisa huffs, crossing her arms. "We make it a letter every few days or a Howler every other."

"You drive a hard bargain." The girl clicks her tongue, but sticks out her hand anyway. "No more, no less."

"Agreed." They shake and hug all around.

Somewhere off to the side, Sun wonders if she'll ever have a say in any of the "deals" the Changs make. As she waves off her sister, who dramatically sticks her head out the window and strikes a pose, she also wonders how weird the other kids their age are going to be when she meets them.

* * *

 _6 September 1990_

 _Charming Cho-Cho,_

 _Congratulations on Ravenclaw... and detention! I can't believe—wait, scratch that. I can completely_ _imagine you arguing with a bird statue, but about stocks? Really? How is a magical gatekeeper supposed to know anything about the British economy? I'm surprised you weren't locked out of the tower longer. Remind me to order a book of riddles for you come Christmas time._

 _Have you made any friends? You mentioned Marietta and Pepper, are they nice girls? If you don't start remembering their family names, mum will have a fit about propriety. She threatens to send a Howler, please spare us all._

 _Love you to the moon and back,_

 _Sungjin_

—+—+—

 _19 October 1990_

 _Sunny Sun Sun,_

 _You need to stop sending origami, there's a pile under my bed now. I'll probably release them into the common room for Halloween. What else am I supposed to do with a thousand cranes?_

 _Charms is my favorite class. Professor Flitwick says I have a future in it, he liked my twist on Spongify: I made a plank elastic instead of rubbery. Marietta copied me after the first try, but the wood bounced and hit Adrian Pucey right in the face. It was brilliant. Soon, everyone was hitting everyone. Five points for chaos!_

 _I think you'll love Marietta. She's not into Quidditch, but she likes to watch movies and paints really well. We can't talk openly about Muggle activities though. Some of our classmates are downright nasty about it, so mum's the word. Oh, that reminds me! We should ask mum to invite her over for summer._

 _I miss the arcade. Our first stop when I come back during break. I still need to beat your highscore. You should bring the twins there some time, I bet their eyes will pop out at the wonders of Donkey Kong._

 _You brighten my day,_

 _Qiū_

—+—+—

 _28 November 1990_

 _Dearest Qiū,_

 _No, we will not be putting Tuttle up for adoption just because he was a day late. Give the owl a break! He still got the letter to me perfectly well._

 _Mum's hit a tight spot with finances this month, so I'm thinking of selling my tears. There's always a jewelry vendor out for pearls, right? I haven't done enough research. Let me know what you think. Maybe ask your potions professor?_

 _Also, just between the two of us, I have a job. Remember the bookstore between Wellberg and Orwell? Sorry I never said anything. I worry about my boss, he's a really good friend to me but avoids humanity like a kicked puppy._

 _How is Quidditch coming along? Are you the Seek-person yet?_

 _Love,_

 _Sungjin_

—+—+—

 _29 November 1990_

 _To my favourite person,_

 _First: I forgive you for sneaking out at night and taking care of books and kicked puppies. That's my little sister. I bet you'll be in Hufflepuff. You radiate kindness._

 _Second: Seeker! It's Seek-er!_

 _Madam Hooch won't even let me try out. She insists that first-years don't know the first thing about sportsmanship, but how is that true? Do people suddenly grow up at 12? I've been flying my entire life! What do these boys know that I don't?_

 _Rubbish, I say! Rubeeeesh. Maybe I should recruit the Weasley twins. They grab attention like nobody's business._

 _I'm absolutely terrified of Professor Snape, but for you, I'll ask him first thing tomorrow if mermaid tears have a practical use. Hold off on the sales._

 _Best,_

 _Qiū_

* * *

Remus Lupin sleeps… _a lot_. On moving staircases, in buses and trains; through the darkest years of his life, when he no longer felt it necessary to be involved in the wizarding world, living in a rundown cabin between Yorkshire and a quiet death.

He'd gotten used to waking up alone, too, until recently. As he blinks back the dreams and rises from the desk, the blanket slides off his body in green ripples and he startles, searching for his assistant. She has a textbook of potions ingredients propped on her knees, face hidden behind the literary menace.

Without returning the curious stare of her werewolf companion, Sun waves overhead in his direction.

 _Rise and shine, sunshine!_ she seems to greet. He smells the coffee she's set out for him on the counter, along with the usual drawing of some flower or beetle, her newest backyard discovery.

"Good morning." Remus takes a swig. The delicate ratio meets perfectly with a hint of hazelnut. Perhaps he should be more present in life, but waking to this comfortable sight isn't bad, either. "Which section have you started on today?"

* * *

The coffee mug shatters, the pieces scattering in a rain of porcelain hazard. Everyone in the room is more or less used to the spontaneous combustion; all but the girl compelling the accidental magic. They are here in London for the bitter bimonthly check-up.

"So there is no way to regrow the tongue?" Lisa asks. Every visit, the same questions. "Attach a new one? Surely you have donors."

Maggie Sinclair, the head of the Children's Division at St. Mungo's, shakes her head. "We can't be spinning fairy tales, Madam Chang. Especially not in front of the patient."

The urgent sounds of bargaining between mother and healthcare provider are muffled to Sun, who swings her legs back and forth on the bed. She watches the exchange in mild envy, for if this were her old life back in the desert, chasing a baby sister around street vendors by day and gambling at bars by night, no one would have any say in her fate except her.

She imagines, then, the voice that had been stolen from her: light and grainy, fine sand slipping between fingers. In the brightly lit room, she is submerged underwater, a familiar but uncomfortable dissociation. The mermaid knew from the very beginning that her case was hopeless; even magic has its healing limits. But it never gets any easier.

"We have gone over this before, your daughter was harmed by an object laced with ancient magic," Sinclair explains. "Presumably dark in nature. There will be no coming back from that, physically-speaking. Her vocal cords were severed with the muscle."

"Then what about some kind of voice-box, as a substitution? You can't expect a child to use a quill forever."

"With an area so delicate as the larynx, there is far too much at risk. Our Healers have rarely dealt with this type of surgery and are thus inexperienced. One false move..."

She needn't elaborate further. Lisa looks as put-out as an abandoned billboard. Her mother looks more nervous than Sun feels; she is grateful that between the two of them, someone _does_ feel.

"I suggest you prepare accommodations for the upcoming school year," Sinclair says. Her watchful gaze rises to the mermaid, who uncomfortably registers the pity. "Hogwarts has accepted worse conditions. Remember Madam Chang that when one door closes, another one opens."

"I wish that were half as comforting as it sounds," the woman replies. She perks up slightly when her youngest daughter motions for paper, pulling her quill out from seemingly nowhere. It begins to scribble as soon as it finds its medium, the owner thoughtful but content.

'What about nonverbal magic?' she relays. 'Cho mentioned it before.'

"Students learn it much later on." Lisa frowns deeply. "It's very difficult. You will fall behind by then."

'I can't learn it earlier?'

"You may," Sinclair interjects, "with the right guidance. There was a male patient years ago who received a Blasting Curse to the head and lost his hearing at the age of thirteen. But from what I know, it took a good tutor and immense concentration for him to adapt. I believe our little mermaid to be just as capable of triumphing her disability."

The Healer runs an affectionate hand through Sun's hair. Her grandmotherly face crinkles up when the girl returns the touch. An astonished presence makes itself known when they make to leave.

"Alice! You shouldn't be out now," Sinclair calls. Sun swivels around, face alight with pure delight at the sight of her Longbottom friend. Lisa can barely get a word in before the mermaid throws herself at the lady in white, who subconsciously hugs back. Her hair is still the same wig donated two years back, an ultimate act of friendship.

It takes about an hour and a half to pry the two apart. Both Sinclair and Lisa find their stress thresholds passed long ago as they exchange farewells. The little mermaid waves vigorously at a retreating Alice, a new skip in her step.

On the way to the station, mother stops in her tracks and kneels down, eye to eye with child. The street around them is quiet and snowy, holding its foggy breath. They watch each other for a few moments, almost touching foreheads. Lisa removes her purple scarf and winds it around Sun's neck, pulling her closer by the ends of the wool.

"Will you run away with me?" Lisa asks, red lips turned up like a bloomed carnation. She doesn't have to wait long for the returned smile.

And so they walk. They walk by uniform houses with checkered mailboxes and paved driveways. They walk by an old man feeding pigeons and a couple buying hot chocolate. They walk by a church with stained-glass windows and a sign asking, "What Don't You Understand?" They walk and walk until their shivering bodies reach the shoreline, until the burdens in their boots are replaced with sediment. The mother watches as Sun wades into the water without rolling her pant legs and disappears under the waves.

She doesn't resurface for a long while, Lisa feeling an acute sense of distress. Surely a child of the sea wouldn't drown? What if—

But soon, the mermaid gloriously bursts through the blue sheen. The water rolls off her cropped hair and down the sides of her face, to the gills peeking out and the fins slowly protruding from her arms. She excitedly runs to her mother with a pink seashell in hand. Lisa stares in awe, happy tears in her eyes, as hope spreads out before them.

'I have a person in mind for tutoring and it's not Ms. Temple,' Sun writes in the sand. Her mother looks mildly miffed at the assertion, wondering how there could be someone in her daughter's life she knew nothing of, but when a small palm slides against hers, fingers sitting perfectly in the gaps, she decides to believe in the little mermaid.

The pair lay there until they both feel whole again. When Cho asks them why they're eating Sun's late-birthday cake half past midnight—"Did you two go somewhere without me? I just got back!"—mother and daughter share a secretive smile.

* * *

January. The night descends, encapsulated like a deep black box lined with frosted lawns and trauma. Someone's ragged breath pounds its airy fists against the sidewalks, a desperate man searching for the missing piece: the Boy Gone Rogue.

Things can't get any worse for Remus. First, his innumerable absences from the bookstore (Sun must be long gone), then losing his other mailroom job, and finally an emergency alert from one Arabella Figg and conveyed to active magical parties in the county at midnight.

He's no longer on the force—no war to fight, no country to save, too busy making ends meet and visiting graves—but the note finds itself in his pocket and reads, simply: _Harry Potter. Missing._

The migraine ticks its way through the werewolf's head. At the recon point, just before 4 Privet Drive, he meets with two familiar faces that are equally red and distressed.

"How did we lose sight of him?!" Dedalus Diggle yells more than asks. His top hat shimmies to the outcry. "What do you have to say for yourself, Figgy?"

"I was attending to a customer," the squib indignantly says, "while _you_ were traipsing around! I specifically asked you to keep an eye on Petunia. She has been acting odd lately… more irate."

"No one can foresee a woman's course."

"Can you foresee my foot in your—"

"Stop this nonsense," Remus interrupts. Mrs. Figg has been in the service of guardianship for years! What madness drove her to prioritize a pet sale over the Chosen One? And Diggle the Dingbat! Why was he buying an ice cream cone _in the middle of winter_?

Not that he voices any of this; there would be no end to it.

"We have a child to find. I've sent for others, but they won't be arriving any time soon. What is the situation in the house?"

"Vernon is taking his evening tea," Mrs. Figg relays. "The son has night lessons. For the past four hours, Petunia has been circling around the living room. She took the young Potter out prior to this, but the boy never came back with her. A couple of days ago, there seemed to be some kind of fight..."

"I may or may not have forgotten to mention that she threw a bottle at his face," Diggle states, twiddling his thumbs. "He came into the flower shop to pick up potting soil and had this great ol' bruise on his cheek!"

The woman smacks her forehead in shame.

"A _bottle_?" Remus stares, miffed. "Why on earth would his aunt do such a thing?"

"I reckon they don't like the lad very much. Probably the reason he's so thin! They give all the meat to their golden boy Dudders"

"It's not just the food," Arabella sniffs. "They put the poor child in a closet for all his life."

"No wonder he runs away so often."

But this is not a simple case of running away from home. If they speak the truth, then Harry is in danger.

"I can't be _this_ uninformed," Remus mumbles to himself. His head snaps up at a new thought. "Has Dumbledore received word of this?"

The two watchers look between themselves nervously and nod. A mix of anger and confusion the werewolf can't endure suddenly springs upon him. All this time, had the child of Lily and James Potter been left to his own devices, to brave beatings and negligence? _Abuse_? It's nearly enough to send him into a frenzy, having been out of the loop for all these years.

Someone has to answer for this; he won't take this sitting down.

 _There must be some mistake_ , whispers the voice of reason. _Dumbledore would never allow this._

Seeing red, the wizard storms away with biting words.

"I am going alone. If either of you follow me, I will hex you into oblivion."

Not bothering to hear the fearful response, Remus stalks off, clutching a worn toy horse that belongs to the son of his friends, the one item of value Mrs. Figg retained during the course of her babysitting. Though the time of the full moon has passed, the man's heightened sense of smell continues to feel its effects.

It carries him across Little Whinging door to door, from the bakery to the zoo, back through the public elementary school. All the places Harry has been in the last two weeks, soft touches here and there, a child marveling at his hometown.

About ready to tear his hair out as he scales the recycling center fence, avoiding the security cameras with a disillusionment charm, Remus determines his next course of Apparition until he catches wind of… _blood_. Iron, faint but sharp, in the piles of plastics and papers.

Night vision attuned the werewolf scans the scene, digging through the rubbish. Finally, with a mental image of a young James Potter in mind, he casts " _Revelio!_ " and watches in rising panic as one particular black trash bag unravels at the top. Slowly, he takes a step forward, wand poised, and when he looks hard enough, the containment seems to shake and breathe, in and out, in and out—

Remus scrambles forward, rough hands prying apart the material. There, in the midst of discarded soda pops and banana peels, he finds a painfully familiar pair of emerald eyes wearily peering up at him. The split lip, purple face, and bruised neck are the worst taunts.

Harry James Potter, a broken animal like himself, waiting for the wick to finally burn out. So as not to scare the boy, the man pulls down the bag one inch at a time before dispelling the grime and repairing crooked glasses. Harry, though starved and sore to his very soul, can't help the awe blooming across his face at the magic.

"Will you run away with me?" Remus blurts, holding up the pony toy as a peace offering.

The Boy Who Lived, though nauseous and numb and not all there, smiles back at the stranger and faints into warm arms.

 _He has scars, too._

* * *

"You should make me a necklace," Cho mumbles sleepily, "with your tears."

She can feel Sun's pointed stare even with her eyes closed.

"Come on, I almost convinced Madam Hooch to let me tryout. Biggest achievement of the year."

She feels the eye roll too, as well as the "maybe" hanging in the air, threading her fingers through the mermaid's still-wet pixie cut. Sun plays with her hair in return, black snakes running along their pristine white pillows.

The two sisters, after months away from one another, spend every waking moment of winter break attesting to the other's existence. Morning picnics, dancing in the afternoon, pillow fights—all without a moment of lost contact, someone's hand always held or knees always bumping. Their love language, a gilded sunflower serenading the sky, sweet yellow meeting baby blue.

"Hogwarts is a funny place. Sometimes, I think the castle is alive, and there are so many off-limit areas, you almost wonder if students have died before. No safety precautions! Knowing you, you'd march up to the Headmaster or teachers and tell them off. Not Flitwick or Sprout though, they're really nice. Maybe McGonagall too, but she's a tough love sort of woman. Hard lines in her class, transfiguration is no joke. Oh! I forgot to mention this but Professor Snape said that if you… boil your tears long enough… the pearls can be made… into painkillers… liquid form..."

The classic _zzz_ sound leaves her mouth after the ramble, breathing slow and warm against Sun's shoulder. The little sister blinks back the sleep herself, tempted to join Cho in dreamland, but slowly slips from the bed, away from the warm waters of heaven and into the early dawn.

From one fireplace to another, Sun runs through the Floo motions and emerges through the green sheen. The bookstore automatically alights, perpetually dusty but well-organized. She goes straight for the armchair, flinging herself into its maroon solace and pulling a nicely toasted paper from her coat.

 _Dear Ms. Sungjin Chang_ _, we are pleased to inform that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry…_

The words become less and less real the more she reads them to herself, like the shrinking space between a snowflake and the ground. The last time Sun attended school, she was answering questions on a college application, wondering how to bring her sister with her to the states if accepted and calculating the money needed for the debts. The children here are guaranteed these things, the privilege of an education, the safety net that would carry them to a promising career.

Their bodies, fixed like demigods, are built to withstand the passage of time, to fly over fields, to achieve the impossible. Sun presses the paper to her chest, eyes fogging and mind reeling. What did they do to the ones that didn't function like that? What if there _weren't_ others like her?

 _Accepted_. Such an easy word to say. She too wants to accept the new life waiting for her a train ride away, another place to share with her beloved sister and hone the strange energy within their souls. A river of ice runs through the girl, tangled into one strong current of doubt.

 _Will they love me_ , Sun thinks, _or laugh at me?_

The old her had turned to Islam in times of need, but now, if anything, she might've been a misotheist. In her final Pakistani years, Suha had lost interest in adhering to faith. It was doubly shameful as a _bacha posh_ to walk out into the streets and have people mock you from all sides: for being a woman, for also dressing up like a man, for feeding the hungry mouths in her household with dirty, dirty money.

Where had Allah been through all of that? Where had Allah been when her country was under fire, when the terrorists came and sent their bombs, when Amir had died in the front lines? Where had Allah been when Sun lost Murong? Would Allah be there for her come Hogwarts, come the bullies and the failures?

The wizarding world knew even less about divinity. Certainly, there must be wizards and witches who practice religion, but in the Chang household, few days were reserved for holy activity. Lisa seemed to be a Christian one month and a Buddhist the next, if at all.

Cho, on the other hand, was… well, _Cho_. She gave Christmas gifts and read tea leaves, sometimes sang her Bethlehem hymns and played an excellent _erhu_ during the veneration of ancestors. The girl honestly prayed to Quidditch more than anything.

The mermaid closes her eyes, instinctively turning her body to the east. She decides to pray once more; everyone needs someone looking out for them. In her mind's eye, she imagines the ascent of Nebula, her Thestral friend, whose wings beat a dark breadth of freedom so far out of human reach. Hands clasped, her head bows as she reaches up to touch the stars. Over and over, her old faith washes her in nostalgia...

A distant clatter catches her attention, breaking the worship. The mermaid looks up to see Remus standing before the backroom doorway, face drawn between distress and happiness. In a heartbeat, Sun rushes to his side, arms poised to smack him for having left her alone for so long. The action dies when she sees him favor his right foot, scarred hands shaking in the folds of his plaid coat.

 _What happened?_ she mouths. The wizard doesn't respond, but rather laughs— _wheezes_ —and over-taps his good foot, head tilted up at the ceiling and fanning himself. The girl raises a brow at the incoming hysteria.

"I… I think I'm going to faint," he announces. "I'll sit first. Yes. That's exactly what I'll do. Wait, no—"

He doesn't get any farther than that, falling to his knees and into Sun, who tumbles down with him and absorbs the impact. This would be the opportune time to groan if she could, but instead, the girl rolls her favorite wizard onto his back like this is a normal occurrence; trying to recall the last time Lisa passed out after Cho almost broke their late grandfather's jade dragon.

Did they pour water on her, or was it a slap to the face? Hm...

The man wakes up before Sun deals her smarting blow, honey-brown eyes flying open and meeting the lopsided smile of his assistant. He feels the w _elcome back_ in the way she gently pushes bangs from his face. The touch grounds him in this mottled, nonsense world, and as much as his inner self warns him not to get any closer, he leans into the slight hand with the fervor of a parched traveler.

When had he found the shape of his loneliness to be the same as hers, an island of _have_ in a sea of _have-nots_? This week had really done a number on him.

"Were you a good girl in my absence?" Remus teases, sitting up. "I believe you missed a spot on the classics shelf."

'I refuse to hear this from the king of truancies.' She gets her hands on a parchment and shoves it at his silly grin. 'The shop's been closed for a month, but I still come often. Are you okay? Where have you been?'

And like that, the wizard's features slump, his back still like a beetle trapped in amber. Sun edges closer, latching onto the reaction.

"I don't have the right words..."

'I will listen to whatever you have to share.'

After several minutes, Remus finds the explanation lodged in his throat. He pries it out like a splinter, pinching and tugging until the words spill across the floor. "I am a rather sick man," he starts, beating around the bush. "My condition forces me to leave work at the most inopportune times. As a result, for a great deal of adulthood, I have been turned out of every employment imaginable, which is why this job has been a blessing. It won't be for another year until the owner returns and we both leave this place."

A bitter swallow. "Because of this ailment, I have run away from many things. Society, friends, myself. I ran away from a responsibility that returned after a decade of looking the other way."

'A visit from the past,' Sun gathers. 'Was that responsibility the reason why you disappeared longer than usual?'

"Yes. I was called to resolve a disturbance, southeast of here."

'What kind of disturbance?'

"A domestic one." He turns to her and sees that she's taken one of his hands hostage in her lap, rubbing circles into his palm. If it weren't for the calm radiating from her entire being, proud of finally keeping him in one place, the man would've run twenty miles away trying to stop the hope blooming in his chest.

 _Don't be kind to me_ , he thinks. _Don't let me in._

"Before you were born, there was a war raging in our world. A dark wizard by the name of Lord Voldemort launched a campaign against Muggles and Muggle-borns with the help of his followers, the Death Eaters, Giants, and… Werewolves. We lost many good people to the war, including three of my best friends. But their deaths were not in vain, for their infant son became the reason for Voldemort's downfall."

'A baby?' She questions it no further; anything is possible in this world. 'He must be famous!'

"Quite," Remus chuckles. "He's known as the Boy Who Lived."

As she revels in the corny title, something dawns on Sun.

'He's the responsibility, isn't he?' she prods. 'The disturbance… was it about him?'

Merlin, it's getting harder to speak through the guilt. "In order to keep him safe from retaliation, the boy was sent to his uncle and aunt in Little Whinging, but as of late, I learned that the Muggles were a threat themselves."

She feels a disgust like no other in the next words.

"I found him in a garbage bag, abandoned by his aunt in the middle of the night." A self-deprecating laugh leaves Remus, who begins to shake in grief. "When I carried him from that destitution, I was incensed by the negligence of the people with whom he lived and by those who merely watched on. But above all, I was angry with myself. I could've… I _should've_ fought for custody at the very start. Kept myself in the loop, even if no one accepted my presence. _I_ let this happen.'

'You didn't know,' Sun asserts. The ink bleeds from how hard the quill presses into the parchment, reflecting its user. 'How could you have known?'

"But I—" The sounds of _scritching_ overpower his voice; the mermaid leads the conversation now.

' _And_ there were things out of your hand! You haven't been in the best shape. You're clearly working more than three jobs at once, can't afford new clothes or good meals. Hardly fit to take care of someone else. Each time you come back, there are new scars on your face and hands, don't think I haven't noticed.'

Remus grows red in shame; she's been far too observant of him. He thought he'd had her distracted with all that book-sorting.

'But I'm not here to pry or judge you. My point is,' and Sun takes both of his hands then, 'do you believe this child deserves a better home?'

"I do," the man automatically says. He pales significantly at the admission. "Are you implying that I should care for him? I-I can't do that. I am a _danger_ to him!"

 _I am a danger to everyone._

'You think the people he's with right now aren't?'

"I am unwell and have no means to save this boy. Plus, he has living family!"

Suddenly, Sun lets go of his fingers and stares straight ahead, studying the fireplace with what appears to be great intent and exhaling through her nose. She folds her legs, putting a canyon-like distance between them. Remus wrings his hands in unease, thinking of all the secrets and avoidance, of all the things he failed to convey—the words at the bottom of his heart that were left to die the day he first practiced magic and realized that there were few people left in this world who cared for the fate of a wolf.

And then he hears a familiar _crick_ , followed by a piece of milk chocolate handed his way. The wizard takes it cautiously and bites, melting alongside the sparkling toffee bits.

'Is it good?' Sun smiles, indulging in her own.

"It is."

'If you can eat chocolate, you're going to be fine.'

For a moment, Sun sheds this small body and returns to when she was a sister and mother and breadwinner. Remus stares for what seems like years into mercurial eyes so unlike anything on land; they carry him to a place of rest.

'Where is he now?' she asks.

"With an old friend. He's a highly-skilled auror, but as of late, he's been in the loop of child services."

Sun nods knowingly. 'The King.'

Remus tries not to let his shock show. "You know of him?"

'He is the reason I have a mother and sister. A home. If it's him, I know the two of you will be in good hands.'

"Sun, there won't be two. I've made that perfectly clear."

'Don't overthink, Remus Lupin. God knows how often you get cold feet. If you saved the boy once, you can save him again.' The girl pats him on the back, fingers barely splayed against his broad shoulder. She grabs her quill in the same movement and writes independently.

'You owe your friends this much.'

The wizard's heart misses a beat; she's right. But how could this eleven year-old be so right?

"What are you?" he blurts, startling her. "How can someone be this concerned for strangers?"

And in that observation, Sun wonders, as she did every day, how she can go on pretending to the people she loves, pretending that she is eleven and not almost 30, that she isn't experiencing culture shock as a Middle-Easterner flitting between European and Asian worlds, that magic doesn't scare her, that she no longer misses her mermaid mother and living under the sea.

That dying was as simple as waking up and accepting the status quo, like she almost did last time. In the end, Sun is out of shape from being molded by everything around her. At least, to Remus, she wants this not to be the case; after all, they were cut from the same cloth. Survivors stick together.

'I'm your friend,' she finally writes. 'I'm your friend and I'm telling you that you're acting like an asshat.'

Remus splutters, more offended that she knows such language than having it used on him, the good sport.

'Anyone can have a child and call themselves a parent, but when you put the needs of that boy before your own, as you have in rescuing him—from a _garbage bag_ , may I remind you—you become a real guardian. No disability detracts from that, and you better not let some legal system do that either. Chocolate man, it's like you _want_ to be poor forever!'

"I most certainly do not!" he retorts, and in doing so lets the words of encouragement finally sink in. She called him chocolate man again! That gets a shaky laugh out of him.

'If you're done with your moping, I have an economic proposition for you.'

"What is it?"

The whites of her teeth flash impishly; if he weren't so keen on being gentlemanly, he'd remark that that was a shit-eating grin rivaling James Potter's.

'You're going to need money to raise a growing boy.'

"I don't have him in custody yet."

' _When_ you do, seeing as you're so child-inclined, how about being my tutor?'

He has never said "yes" so quickly to anything in his life.

* * *

Lisa Chang doesn't bother feeling surprised anymore when her youngest brings home a man; it's honestly not even in her top ten betrayals, the first or second performed on broom by none other than Cho-Cho. But they don't speak of those mistakes, at least not in front of guests.

"I take it you like children?" she simply asks, arms crossed over her bathrobe, wand poised to curl her hair.

"I'm hoping to adopt one very soon, in fact," Remus replies. "Your daughter is rather persuasive."

Oh, he's a keeper. Maybe too old for her baby, but a teacher he shall be; and a father, if she can help it. Working for the ministry doesn't come with its perks for nothing. Sun tugs her back to reality, signaling at her friend's shabby clothes.

Right, where were her manners? Lisa tuts under her breath. "Now, let's get you out of those rags! You've a nice face, what have you been doing to it all these years?"

 _Oh, she's a keeper_ , Remus thinks as he's handed five different suits of varying shades of blue and purple. Sun salvages him a brown one and gives him a look that explains everything: all the horrors of Ravenclaw and Quidditch colors.

* * *

"Welcome home," Kingsley whispers, staying in his seat by the bed. He looks upon the now well-groomed appearance of his friend Remus Lupin. "He's sleeping better. Long day?"

"Dumbledore has been preoccupied with Nicolas Flamel this month," the werewolf says. "I've been on the receiving end of characters like Bones and Doge instead. Just what does Magical Law Enforcement have anything to do with this case?"

"Amelia just wants to make sense of the situation," Kingsley replies. "The more allies, the better. Madam Chang is vouching for you too."

"That's a relief. Harry no longer has his parents or godfather around. Even if there is a blood protection in that house, there must be something else that can be done."

"Do not fret. I've gone ahead and purchased this house, right next door. Even on the off-chance that you lose, you will still be able to keep an eye out for Harry."

"Ask for a raise next time," Remus stresses. "You've done us a great service. When is the official hearing?"

"Two weeks from now." Kingsley shakes his head and rises to clap Remus on the back. He retrieves a box from his cloak and hands it over, the wrapping paper shimmering like scales in the firelight. "I hear you're a tutor again. Your student wanted the boy to have this. Let me know if you need any other paperwork filed."

"I will not forget this, Kingsley. Safe travels."

The black wizard Apparates away in a light crack of sound as Remus walks over to the twin bed and sets his things down, eyes gone caramel with warmth. He lets his fingers glide over a soft cheek, pushing back the unruly black hair, so much like his father's, to reveal a lightning-bolt of a scar upon the forehead. The anxiety in his heart drifts away, replaced by a conviction like no other.

"Thank you for taking a chance on me. They won't hurt you again, I promise."

 _I won't hurt you._


End file.
